Our building is getting a face lift

About a year ago, we had the pleasure of working with the Main Street Fellows Program at UNCG. Our town has a relationship with this program which provides design assistance for storefront rehabs in historic buildings across North Carolina. We had such a great time working with the students to develop a plan to bring our building back to a more period appropriate appearance. They shared their research into how the building looked and what it was used for since it was built in 1895. One really interesting fact was that originally there were large transom windows above the front doors. We learned that, since electricity was not always available at the time the building was built, they took advantage of as much natural light as possible. I am working on creating 3 stained glass windows in the style of historic “prismatic lights” that will fit into this space.

The process to renovate the façade has moved very slowly but, if all goes well, we should be under construction in about a month! This rendering, done by the UNCG team, is a close approximation to what will be coming eventually. We are starting with my store front and the entrance to our front apartment (the right side of the building) and hopefully continuing the work on the left side in the future. We would love to remove the stucco and take the building back to its original brick but that is a huge project. So for now, we are taking it one lovely, historic step at a time.