The first floor of the Anthe building on Saturday. The retail store is coming along. All the drywall is required by the country for fire suppression.
When you rehabilitate an old building, your plans have to change (almost daily) to keep things moving forward and to code.
The "code" part of the project is what has been driving us for the last few weeks. We want the building to look like it did when we bought it and was empty. But it also has to be safe and adhere to the county's regulations if we ever want to occupy it.
This week, the fire-resistant drywall went in around the stairwell, and it was (honestly) a bit dispiriting. I know we are going to cover parts of the drywall with beadboard (some of it original), which will look better. But the drywall really changes the look of the place. And it made us re-evaluate how we are going to use the second floor of the building.
The second floor with the required drywall (the steel ceiling had to be pulled off for the drywall – not our call). The boxed-in stairwell shrinks the space for our offices. We will likely give this floor up to storage.
My hope all along has been to use the second floor as our editorial offices, with excess storage at the rear of the second floor
But after the walls went up to meet code and were covered in the first layer of drywall, it was obvious that the second floor isn't ideal for offices. The fire-resistant walls interrupt the building's front windows. And the resulting space (and all the mechanicals on the wall), made me rethink the space.
I think we are going to devote the entire second floor to storage.
After some thought, this makes good sense. The second floor has a double door at the rear (right above our loading area). We can use our forklift to put pallets directly into the second floor from a delivery truck. No elevator necessary.
The third floor is more spacious. Plus we don't need to remove all of the ceiling. This will likely become our offices. I hope....
The third floor looks like our future editorial offices. The fire-rated drywall area is much smaller, so the space is more open. And we don't have any plans for it yet. This allows us to grow with lots of storage on the second floor and offices on the third floor, with room for workbenches and all the other things in my head.
Despite all this faffing, we are getting close to occupancy. If our schedule holds, we will be able to move fulfillment operations to Anthe by the end of this month.
It's not all dispiriting. We have a new functioning awning on the front of the building, which looks fantastic and works. Our bathroom works and is to code (after moving a wall about 5/8").
And this is my fourth rodeo with 19th-century building rehabs. I know it is always worth it in the end. I had a similar crisis with all of the other buildings we've rehabbed. We get through it. And it's awesome.
Thanks for all of you who have helped fund the restoration. It has made a real difference.
— Christopher Schwarz
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