This is inspection day. That is Mike our real estate agent and Helene in the show room. The floor has a carpet covered in Maytag symbols. I wonder if they were required to use that carpet as part of the franchise branding?
Looking from near the front door you can see the office and the strange way they decided to mount the heat/air conditioning unit. There is an unused space behind the wall directly behind the support column that I think would have been a better location choice.
This is the office behind the three windows you see in the picture above.
Eventually we end up ripping all of this out.
This is the ceiling tile in the showroom. it is in good shape and we will keep it in the gallery.
When we get the building the showroom is about 45 x45 with two office spaces carved out on the left and right rear. Behind the showroom was a garage served by a door and ramp carved into the side of the building. You can see a side garage door next to the entrance on the south west side viewed from across the street.
Here is the interior behind the Garage Door looking to the west office.
Here is another view of the garage. the door on the right goes into the middle of the showroom. The area behind the flag is where I think the air conditioner should have been mounted. There must have been a reason but I can't see it. The Porshe in the for ground was supposedly souped up with over $100,000 worth of parts to make it a rally worthy race car.
It's no wonder they needed to sell the building. I suspect the building modifications deal was sold on the basis that the race car parts business would supposedly pay for the racing
indulgence.
This is the middle of the north east side. The door leads to what will be Helene's wet studio. It is part of the "new" building that begins at the first brick discontinuity on the left. The door is fire rated because when we bought the building with the side lot, the store property line was 3 ft from the door. In order to be able to put windows and patio doors in this side wall we had to pay to have the property subdivision plan redrawn and surveyed so that the building and the side lot would show on the maps as one lot. Otherwise I guess they figure I could sell the side lot and generate a fire code violation.
This is the room behind the door that will be the wet studio. the wall on the left appears to be constructed apparently as an earthquake shear wall. Anyway, it has oneside done in plywood instead of plasterboard.
Here is a peek behind the building. The apparent alleyway is actually a shared driveway with Louis Beans a plumber with another work live situation like we will be building. The zoning if this neighborhood is unusual in that it is general business but intermixed with residential houses. It is in a 2 block deep 5 block wide area in between Lowertown and the Fountain avenue residential revival project. It does not need the special zoning granted to Lowertown to have a work live situation.
It also is only 3 blocks from what will be the main campus of the new
Paducah School of Arts. and hopefully soon
here.
The school has opened in temporary (but nice) quarters in downtown Paducah and is offering courses. It is opening under the umbrella if the
Western Kentucky Community and Technical College.
Here is the back studio. on inspection day. It has three skylights and we plan to add 2 more. we will also put in two patio door assemblies along the back wall and replace the wood posts with two steel lolly columns
Here is a view of the same room as we first saw it. The floor had embedded wood strips that formed the nailing base for the original wood floor. When the roof caved in places the floor was ruined but it means the floor has to be re-poured.
The Next Post will probably be about plans
This is inspection day. That is Mike our real estate agent and Helene in the show room. The floor has a carpet covered in Maytag symbols. I wonder if they were required to use that carpet as part of the franchise branding?
Looking from near the front door you can see the office and the strange way they decided to mount the heat/air conditioning unit. There is an unused space behind the wall directly behind the support column that I think would have been a better location choice.
This is the office behind the three windows you see in the picture above.
Eventually we end up ripping all of this out.
This is the ceiling tile in the showroom. it is in good shape and we will keep it in the gallery.
When we get the building the showroom is about 45 x45 with two office spaces carved out on the left and right rear. Behind the showroom was a garage served by a door and ramp carved into the side of the building. You can see a side garage door next to the entrance on the south west side viewed from across the street.
Here is the interior behind the Garage Door looking to the west office.
Here is another view of the garage. the door on the right goes into the middle of the showroom. The area behind the flag is where I think the air conditioner should have been mounted. There must have been a reason but I can't see it. The Porshe in the for ground was supposedly souped up with over $100,000 worth of parts to make it a rally worthy race car.
It's no wonder they needed to sell the building. I suspect the building modifications deal was sold on the basis that the race car parts business would supposedly pay for the racing
indulgence.
This is the middle of the north east side. The door leads to what will be Helene's wet studio. It is part of the "new" building that begins at the first brick discontinuity on the left. The door is fire rated because when we bought the building with the side lot, the store property line was 3 ft from the door. In order to be able to put windows and patio doors in this side wall we had to pay to have the property subdivision plan redrawn and surveyed so that the building and the side lot would show on the maps as one lot. Otherwise I guess they figure I could sell the side lot and generate a fire code violation.
This is the room behind the door that will be the wet studio. the wall on the left appears to be constructed apparently as an earthquake shear wall. Anyway, it has oneside done in plywood instead of plasterboard.
Here is a peek behind the building. The apparent alleyway is actually a shared driveway with Louis Beans a plumber with another work live situation like we will be building. The zoning if this neighborhood is unusual in that it is general business but intermixed with residential houses. It is in a 2 block deep 5 block wide area in between Lowertown and the Fountain avenue residential revival project. It does not need the special zoning granted to Lowertown to have a work live situation.
It also is only 3 blocks from what will be the main campus of the new Paducah School of Arts. and hopefully soon here.
The school has opened in temporary (but nice) quarters in downtown Paducah and is offering courses. It is opening under the umbrella if the Western Kentucky Community and Technical College.
This building began around 1900 as a pair of stores that were joined together to make a 46 by 80 foot building. Not much later a 60 foot addition was added to make a 46 x 140 foot store complex. It was best known as the Sloane Brothers Grocery in the 1920's. Monroe Sloane, whose father and uncle owned the store tells me this story. Sometime around 1927 the Sloane brothers were bought out by Piggly Wiggly Food stores. The brothers invested the money and in 1929 lost it in the market crash. Piggly Wiggly was bought out by Krogers and the building may have operated as a Kroger's store during the 1930's. In any event, the great flood of 1937 put water up about 6 ft in the building and it was used as an appliance store, warehouse and other things until disrepair and decay set in.
From another neighbor I found out that in 2002 the building was renovated by the local Maytag franchise as their showroom. This renovation replaced the roof and floor for the front part of the building. Sometime around 2004 Maytag was bought by Whirlpool and the franchise was lost.
For awhile the building housed a High Performance Auto parts shop run by the owner's grandson. When we bought the building It had been on the market for 3 years and I think the owner may have been just exhausted by the burden of the mortgage.
In the next installments I'll review the before pictures and the planning and Blue print stages.
Bob Davis
