Commercial Renovation - $100 - $150,000

Gillespie Properties

 

        Before     After
  Do you remember this house?  Probably not.  Although it's been in the downtown Columbia area for a long time, it's never really been much of a show place... until now. This is the same house after a lot of sweat equity, some clever remodeling and a new coat of highly-visible white paint.
GillespieIntB4_1.jpg (52634 bytes)  GillespieIntB4_2.jpg (49365 bytes)  GillespieIntB4_3.jpg (47788 bytes)   GillespieIntAft_1.jpg (56049 bytes)  GillespieIntAft_2.jpg (31958 bytes)  GillespieIntAft_3.jpg (33053 bytes)

Three Before...       Click on each picture above to see larger versions      ...and three After
    This old art-deco house became abandoned in about 2001 and has been inhabited by anyone looking not to be found for a night or couple days.   As you can see from the before pictures (above) there was a lot of trash strewn about and most of the windows were broken out.  After securing the property from unwanted entry, Gillespie Properties began the massive clean up and the actual remodeling.  Their thought was that they could make this a nice office space as it is located on a busy downtown intersection, or at the very least, they'd take a house that was once nice and turn it into something special again.       They started by taking out and adding some interior walls and doors inside the house.  Windows and window blocks had to be added or replaced, and the flat-top roof had to be re-roofed.  The plumbing was rusted out and the electric wires were old, so all of that was replaced and brought up to code.  A new HVAC system and duct work was installed.  A handicap accessible bathroom was added to meet commercial codes by taking some space from the kitchen.  Upstairs closets were taken out or resized to make a more open space and a built-in work desk was added. And finally, the garage was converted into a conference room.

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     After a lot of hard work and some great vision by the remodelers, this abandoned house is now a functioning office and it's true to its original roots.