In which we slowly move towards working at the Ocean House again.

What a week for weather!  As I write this is is something like 4 degrees out on a day between snow storms.  Life is busy here, but I did find a few hours to go and prime the sprinkler pipes white to make them disappear.  Not as long a job as I thought it would be, but just so boring that I am falling asleep while writing about it!  It has been good for us to "live" in the apartment for the last couple of days so that we can come up with a furnishing and flooring plan.  

We do need to do something about soundproofing between the floors.  We have some ideas, but need to pass them by someone who knows more about this than we do.  We will carpet most of the first floor of the apartment, mostly for cost, but also because the sound barrier between the retail business on the first floor and the apartment is so needed.  I have found a cellular sound barrier that is made to go under carpet matting, so I think we will be ok on that front.  

Greg is well on the way to completing the downstairs bathroom.  We have to go searching for the tile we will need for the shower and the floor early this week, so perhaps by next weekend we will be able to install the first floor sink and toilet.  Then I think finishing and furnishing a bedroom is in order so that we could actually stay overnight (only needing a electric kettle for morning tea).

We are thinking about EVERYTHING, what to do in the kitchen, what to do for stairs from the first to second floor, how to finish off the mudroom....I suppose it would be easier to have a plan in mind BEFORE starting the finishing work, hell, we don't even have paint colors in mind yet!  We do have fun though when one of us sees a pleasing treatment.  We were in LLBean the other day and love their treatment of the stairway in the outdoors building.  People think we are nuts when we start taking photos of tile we like in a public bathroom, or of stair treatments in major retailers around the world!!

The stairs today

I wish we had had the forethought to save the weathered boards from the barn to make into kitchen cabinets.  I see a kind of industrial loft like kitchen in shades of gray with open shelves below and weathered cabinets above.  Perhaps it is a pipe dream, or perhaps we know a retired Contractor with a barn full of old wood who has left the country for a few months and left the barn unguarded! 

Greg mentioned leaving all the woodwork downstairs natural color, which would give the common areas a Tudor look, something we kind of wanted way back when we took the old walls down and the space looked like this: (Oh my, this was so long ago---May of 2013)  I originally said no, that we should paint the baseboards and the window trim to match the walls, so they disappear, but I have spent a few hours contemplating it and am warming to the idea.  Sometimes treatments like that can look like a cheap ski house rental, but I bet we can make it work.  

The same space today

I just cannot wait to see what we do with this place!

In which we have a smoke stack and hand railings in!

Ok, it's official, we are a grown up building now that we have industry inside us requiring a chimney and hand railings installed on the outside stairs.  Ooo, and signage in the parking lot.  

I guess it's more that we are official now.

Greg and I agonized for weeks about whether we should go the blacksmith route and have decorative handrails made, but the expense was a bit too much to justify right now.  We went back and forth about this until we decided to save money now and have our favorite local machine shop, Doak's, just make plain and functional handrails.....they are perfect for their purpose.  At some point down the road, we may wish to make more of a statement, but right now, there are so many things to finish...
I really like these handrails.

More great news is that the pizza oven arrived and was hooked up with the chimney a day later.  I was a bit nervous about where the chimney was going to end up.  I gave my pretty strong opinion of how I wanted it to go and it came out better than I asked.  I wanted to make sure that if the chimney could come out through the molding on the side of the building, we would have a better time patching it down the road if the chimney ever got taken out or replaced. I like the way it snugs up to the corner of the building.

Greg has been working on the apartment a bit, starting in the bathrooms.  I have a bit more "other work" to get done and then I need to change gears and get this place done.  Onward!

In which the New Year brings happiness to the Ocean House!

A year ago today, this is where we were with renovations at the Ocean House.  We did a lot of work in a year!  This is now the beautiful first floor space where Brambles is located.  Note that we had not even put new windows at this point!

Yesterday marked the first day that the building is fully heated, and none too soon since it was 9 degrees when I woke up yesterday.  I had the pleasure of going down to the building to make sure the heat pumps were working.  One of the things I kept reading about before we put these heat pumps in was that as the temperature lowers, the efficiently of the heat pump gets less.  I was so happy to see that all the spaces in the building were cozy and warm.  What I LOVE though is that the heat is moist.  I am experimenting with the heat in the apartment, where there are six heating units.  With only two units going last month, the bill was around 100.00 for heating 2400 square feet.  I am hopeful that with more units, the bill might actually lower, since (in my mind) the compressor will work less with more units working.  We'll see.  I have our winterized cottage heat set around 50 degrees and the bill comes to about 120 a month for propane to heat a space half the size of the apartment.....color me impressed!

In other news, the buildout of the lower level space is coming along very nicely.  The tenants are doing a really nice job making a welcoming space for their restaurant.  One hardly recognizes the interior anymore.  Hard to believe that this is what that space looked like a year ago: Oh wait, there wasn't a space there a year ago, I can still see through the building at this point.  

 

Greg and I are headed out of town for a few weeks, our first vacation in about two years. Work resumes on the apartment when we return, all tanned and rested.  

Happy 2015 everyone, may the New Year bring a finished Ocean House and prosperity to everyone!

In which we eagerly anticipate our new tenant.

We, along with a lot of Belfast folks, are eagerly anticipating the opening of our new tenant, a wood fired pizza company.  Thats right, you heard it hear first...or maybe second, or possibly third.  I have been accosted on the street by people who have heard rumors about the new restaurant going into the lower level.  When ex-Mayor, Mike Hurley called out to us on the street the other day to tell us that his people came from a small village about 10 minutes from where one of our new tenants grew up, you know the word is out on the street.  So, we welcome Alex, a master pizza chef trained to make pizza in the traditional Neapolitan manner, and his lovely partner, Clementina, who will be responsible for the front of the house.

To that end, Clementina told us how she wanted to finish the floor in the new space.  Greg and I spent weeks agonizing over what to put down on the concrete to make the space look lovely and useable as a gallery or office space.  If you are long time readers, you will remember our 88 boxes of flooring.  Clementina and Alex wanted to keep the floor simple and so chose to paint the floor a gorgeous blue color.  Funnily enough, our favorite paint guy came to measure the space and see what we needed in terms of paint and thought 3 maybe 4 gallons would do the trick....here is a photo of Greg on the fifth gallon.

And the space after the second coat and six and a half gallons of paint later.  Greg and I decided that the floor needed a third coat.  Note how the floor reflects the light from the windows.  There are no lights on in the space in this photo.

The addition you see below will house the pizza oven, a 2 ton, three part oven that is being shipped from Italy in the next few weeks.  

One of the lovely things about the blue floor is how the color changes with light.  Below is a photo of the floor after the 8th gallon of paint.  When the lights are off, the color is a deep, gorgeous blue.  With the lights on, the color of the floor turns a soft lilac color that softens up the space.  

Brava, Clementina, I cannot wait to see the rest of your buildout plans come to fruition.  

Hopefully, the restaurant will open in mid-January.  The buildout starts today.  Greg and I are off to Kansas, but back in time to see the oven installed.  

In which we go way back....and I thank people for helping us with history.

Since starting this project almost two years ago now, I have been excited to occasionally get some historical information from people about the building.  Some have gone so far as to send me photos they find, others have filled in the blanks with newspaper articles or bits of anecdotal information. Recently a Three Tides friend passed me a couple of photos of the Ocean House.  The first one below was a photo that we already had and that has been the basis for our renovation of the Ocean House.  But Dave, who gave us the photo, found a much better copy than we had previously had  The building details are clear, and I can even read the signs posted outside the front door!  Dave works in the archives at the Penobscot Marine Museum, whose collection includes thousands of glass plate negatives of buildings and events in the surrounding towns. 

Anyway, as I said, the photo below is what we used as the basis for the renovation.  Some people have asked me why the front of the building is not clapboarded like the sides of the building and that is because we found the original facade underneath a later set of clapboards.  We knew they were original because we strained our eyes for a couple of days at the grainy copy we had of the photo below.  The porch is based on the photo below, as is the restoration of the center door on the second floor and all the large windows on the first floor. 

What we didn't have until a few weeks ago was this photo, showing all the details of the trim, the door, the windows on the first floor, etc.  I always thought the front window frames on the first floor were somewhat original, but that appears to be untrue.  Here the windows are taller and narrower with mullions in between the glass panes. In the photo above, one can see that more of the front facade shows under the windows and the trim makes a bit more sense than it does today. What I find interesting is how low the porch is in these photos, but then I saw that there are two steps on the porch to get into the front door..a detail we were not able to see in our grainy photo. Today, the porch is higher on the building to accommodate our handicapped ramp. One can step onto the porch or walk up the ramp and walk right in the front door.  

Greg's comment was:  Too bad the "Ocean House" sign is so ugly!  One day soon, there will be another Ocean House sign on the building, but it probably won't look like this one.

Dave also sent me this clipping, which I had had from Megan Pinette of the Belfast Historical Society as well.  Apparently work on the now absent barn started on August 30, 1917.  I still lament that we had to take the barn down, but it was about to fall over...just like the Ocean House!

What I love about this photo, which I believe came from a paper in the 1920s is the addition to the first floor on the Federal Street side of the building.  It must have been a stage office or something.  You will note that by this time the door on the second floor was filled in (and this is exactly the way we found it, with the clapboard covering over the opening, but leaving the frame.) and that the first floor front windows have been replaced with what we currently have.  As I said, I thought these windows were original, but perhaps they were replaced when work started on the barn.  The porch had been replaced with a roll out awning....which I sometimes think would have been a much cheaper solution than putting the porch back on...but c'est la vie, non?  I also note that the front windows were lowered, and less facade showed at that time.  I think you might be able to see that the front doors were flush with the facade before being retrofitted in the 70s or thereabouts.  

I can't rightly remember, but either Megan sent me the photo below or someone posted it on facebook.  From the car out front, this could be a photo dating from the late 70s or early 80s, probably around the time the property changed hands from Herb Staples to the next owner, from whom we purchased the property.  You can see that by now, the front door has been recessed.  You might remember my discussion of this from an earlier post where we found that the original front doors had simply been propped open and made into the recessed walls in 1960.  Also note that the asphalt shingling was put over the second floor door and the second floor windows replaced.  I just noticed the bundle of rail road ties in the foreground, used to make planters in the front of the building.....planters which were still there when we bought the place.

 Boy, it was a sorry looking place then...and hardly anything else was done to it for 30 years more!

A photo of Herb Staples that I pulled off Facebook.  Herb owned the Ocean House for decades, his family lived on the second floor and he operated a machine shop and a motorcycle repair shop in the back lot (so told me by Al from EBS who sold me the windows and doors for the building.  He worked there as a teenager)  You can see the barn in the background.

aaaaand the obligatory picture of us in about the same place 30 years later.  

October 2012 right before we bought the place.  The asphalt shingling on the front of the building was replaced with clapboard and painted red...covering up and protecting the original facade.  

If you have been reading this blog faithfully, you know the rest of the story so far!

If anyone has or knows of interior photos of the Ocean House from years past, I would love to know about them!!  Thank you to everyone who has regaled us with stories or passed us photos in a bar (you know who you are) or just emailed me with tidbits....keep it coming!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

In which a lease is finally signed for the lower level!

Yesterday was a momentous occasion.  We finally signed a lease with our tenants for the lower level space!  In coming to know our tenants more, it was evident that we both want the same things for the lower level, and have some of the same design aesthetics.  Whether it was a good move or not, we all agreed to have our lawyers work on a lease that we would both be comfortable with in the end.  That was almost five weeks ago!  Yesterday, both parties were fed up and we decided to just go with the last version of the lease rather than wait for the lawyers to dicker more.  Then the lawyers came back to say..yes, you can all sign. 

We have a new restaurant space in town now!  The proprietors want to be open as soon as they can, which I hope means that they will be open for "New Years by the Bay."  The build out is extensive and very cool.  Greg and I are really excited!

Welcome to the Ocean House, Alex and Clementina!  We can't wait to have you in the space.

This is the Federal Street Facade, and the restaurant will go in on the red level.  

In which I dig heat pumps

It is starting to get colder here in Maine, the nights have seen temps dip into the high 20s and we have already had two snowfalls.  The first, around Halloween, took out our power for five days.  

We have three heat pump units installed in the apartment so far...the ones just on the first floor.  I set them up and left them on to see how well they would heat all 2400 square feet and they performed very well. The whole apartment is now a consistent temperature.  Granted, winter has not really arrived, but I wanted to make sure that we could handle just having three units working just in case the heating guys didn't get the rest of the units up and running...we have the units, the heating guys are just taking their time....

We have two units running in the open space of the first floor of the apartment, one in the living room and one in the hall, just under the stairs.  There is a third, smaller unit in the first floor bedroom, but I haven't turned that one on yet.  

I have reports from the first floor tenants that their unit works beautifully and they are so far happy with it.  Lisa turns hers down to about 50 at night and she says it doesn't take much time for it to get going in the mornings. The heating guys installed Daikin systems that have the ability to heat and cool as well as dehumidify.  The units are very quiet both inside and outside.  

This is the unit that pretty much heats the upstairs.  I am satisfied with the tightness of the building...I can be upstairs in the apartment and never hear what is going on outside because of the insulation in the walls.  3" of corbond on the inside and 1.5" thick blue board on the exterior.  

the smaller bedroom unit

The outside row of compressors which are quiet.  The unit under the window is the cooling unit for the commercial flower cooler on the first floor of the building.  Now that sucker is loud!  One more compressor and three more units on the upper floor need to be installed to complete the work.