Social Room: Gathering the Crew and Expertise

The beams in the social room had finally broken, and it was no longer safe to be in the room, so in 1987 a roofing company was hired to fix the roof, but they ignored the structural details.  Historic preservation money was attracted to this building because of the connection to the community.  Also, because it was unsafe and was easily visible by the community, the social room project was a good fit for preservation funding.  While the first grant took months to write, the second only took a weekend using the same format (we were getting better at this).  Our challenge was to build the social room to current building codes, while recreating the building to its original look.  One teensy unknown was how the 12 inch diameter logs would “act” when we take off the roof.  There’s a chance the exterior logs could implode upon themselves when the roof gets taken apart, bringing down the whole structure.  We needed a structural engineer.   As different portions of the roof were uncovered the plans were be drawn up and redrawn.   As usual it always takes more time, energy and resources than you think to recreate an historic building, whether it is problems with the roof, wiring or floor boards.  We initially had great photo documentation inside and out helping the recreation process.  Funny thing about how you find your historic documentation, the photos we used had been thrown away and were sitting by the dumpster. Lucky for us, someone saw them and retrieved them just in time.  These photos showed immense detail for recreating the house and without them recreating it would have been done incorrectly.  We found the engineers through the same people that had been used before for the porch and utilities.  We now had everything but a crew to perform the job. Then half a year was lost because the building codes were changed so finding a crew became more difficult.  The builder who built the porch wanted to build the social room, but he was not licensed.  He eventually found somebody with a license, and these two groups were melded together to do the construction.  We now had a “crew” to start the building.



Phase Two Social Club Room: A Brief History

Originally an L shape constructed of two rectangular boxes, the social club was originally connected to the dining room on the northeast corner where the L comes together.  From 1897 to 1932 the building was sufficient enough for guests with just the front porch and lobby and dining room; the kitchen was located in the back in case of fires.  But by 1932 the community had changed from mining to a summer vacation spot where people would come for months at a time.  Residents of Eldora felt that they needed a place to meet, but the owner wanted somebody else to pay for it.  The solution: raise the money among the residents with club fees of $100 from 20 families.  The social club was the place women would come to gossip and men would come to smoke cigars.  The privileged people were allowed in the social room, which also helped separate social classes.  The social club connected the dining room and the kitchen, but also had an outside door.  It was covered by a 3/12 roof, which means 12 tiles out and 3 tiles down. That makes for a fairly flat roof resulting in tremendous snow accumulation every winter.  The beams holding up the roof of the social room were nailed into the original structure.  This flimsy support was somehow able to hold up to 300 or 400 pounds for nearly 70 years.  By 2008, however, the entire ceiling was caving in. Next to the highly visible and failing porch, the social room was the second most deteriorated part of the building.  On to our next restoration project. Lucky for us, the construction is similar to a couple other commercial buildings built in the same time period (the tungsten mine building), so we assume it was the same builder.  This already helped us in a few key areas like the look of the windows.



One Down… Phase One Completed

Everybody in the county building department—building inspectors, plan examiners, historic building staff—all bent over backwards to help us fit the new international building code to our 1897 building. We could not have finished this piece without their help. With the inspections complete, with the sign erected, with light in place we were able to move on to the next phase: The Social Room but in the meantime we had booked a high school reunion from Kansas.  Here they are on the porch.  In a way it does look like 1890s except it isn’t snowing.



The Porch: Ongoing Themes/Issues

Part of an historic restoration project in a small community involves the “peanut gallery,” passersby comment.  Literally, 20 percent of our paid hourly wage was spent with our workers talking to people walking by.  Some even took the workers off our job to their own house to see if they could do the same thing.  Except for the slight annoyance in $25 per hour walking down the street, we realize the project is an educational tool for the entire community, and we hope more people in Eldora will take a similar approach to their own property.



The Porch: Putting it together – the extreme in outrageous detail.

Unlike some projects, following the Secretary of the Interior Standards takes a bit more time, more money, and some luck. Essentially, every minor decision adds detail that together produce the historic fabric. No compromising.  The identification of the paint color is a good example.  We decided early to save the original porch posts.  For longer than we have owned the building the trim was painted red.  That color was harsh but it was there and it did match the roof metal.  Of course the roof of the main structure was originally wood shingle.  We had photographs showing metal as far back as the mid 1940s. The oral history of the owner in the 1950s related a story of her family practicing mountain climbing skills by repelling down the side of the building repainting the roof red as they went.  There was also the tale of the muddy footprints going up the side of the building. So we had not questioned the use of red.

When we were preparing to repaint, we scrapped the original posts.  Down several layers just above the bare wood was a green.  The photos were only black and white but it did upon inspection appear that there was a color other than white on the trim on the front only; not anywhere else.  Photos in the 1930s showed white only on all other trim.  We made the decision to replicate the green which fits the colors of the palette of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. ( http://www.valspar.com/explore-colors/historic-colors/paint-colors.html ).

The building code requires a light fixture by the front door.  Boulder County, to protect the night sky, requires the light be less than 15 watts, one escape the property, and we wanted something energy efficient and not be a visible fixture as there was no porch light in 1897.  We found the right type of fixtures at National Specialty Lighting in Louisville, Colorado (www.nslusa.com ). This LED light does have that surgical room look harsh light and at some point we will add a yellow filter to fix that problem but most important you can’t see the fixture but it meets all of the requirements.

This search for detail becomes a game.  How outrageously detailed can you get?