Before reading any further, be sure to first check out Office Update: Part 1.
As our office continues to burst at the seams (can you believe we have almost 20 employees now?), there is excitement in the air at WBCP as we are getting closer to moving into our new office space in Rogue River, just down the road from where we are now. Of course, with any huge renovation, it would not be as simple as we hoped. None of us have ever renovated a 100-year-old building that hasn’t been occupied by people in a decade (many bats have found a home here though). We like to call it “fake it ‘til you make it,” but we also found a great contractor to guide us through this process. Once we got past selecting our contractor, we started to crack open what we thought had ‘good bones’ and this is what we found:
- Challenge #1: Approximately 1,000 square feet of wood flooring was rotten and needed to be replaced – Thank goodness our contractor knows where to find century-old replacement flooring.
- Challenge #2: A quarter of the building’s floor joists are rotted out – Apparently you can’t put walls up on sinking floors. Where do you find 20’ x 12’ x 2” floor joists these days?
- Challenge #3: Bringing back 100-year-old floors – Can you say staples galore?
With all these challenges laid before us, it seemed like a daunting task. Luckily, as recruiters, we have the innate skill of becoming fast experts in various industries for our recruitments – and this renovation is no different. We also know how to persevere and are resourceful project managers. Trying to work with budget constraints and finding out that the world doesn’t mill wood like it used to, we reached out to our dear friend, who just happens to have his own sawmill, to get old-school floor joists produced for this beautiful 100-year-old building.
Once we stopped the floor from sinking into our basement, we now had the opportunity to restore the amazing century-old flooring. For decades, these beautiful floors were covered with other types of flooring – flooring that had thousands of staples holding it in place (ugh!). Trust us when we say we tried to find the easy way of getting these staples out, but ultimately, we realized the only path to success was to pull each and every one out ourselves and sacrifice our knees and backs for the WBCP cause.
WBCP’s superheroes pulled together a staple-pulling party (honestly – any excuse for a party is our forte). Of course, it didn’t hurt that the morning crew was tempted with mimosas (Hey – it was a weekend) and lox and bagels, and the lunch volunteers ravaged pizza and White Claws while cranking good tunes. Well, it ended up that one weekend wasn’t enough and thankfully we had additional help throughout the rest of the week. After what we estimated was 200 hours of staple pulling, WE FINISHED! Our wonderful contractor (who helped with the staple pulling too) also found us our replacement wood flooring for the rotted parts but had to ship them from Canada. The end product, after a few days of sanding, was more than worth it. We brought these old floors back to life. Here’s to 100 more years!
Now, all we need are walls, doors, lighting, and electrical throughout the building, and a daycare made from an unfinished basement. More to come on this and a few other surprises that we have up our sleeves – we can’t wait to share.