If you have been following along with my move to Texas you know that I purchased a historic building in downtown Groesbeck, a small town outside of Waco. This trip I put on the work gloves and got dirty.
Day one of clean up on a project like this old building is always a bit overwhelming, when I bought the building sight unseen, I understood it was going to be a big project, but the scale of it was hard to fathom just from the pictures. From what I could tell no one had been using the front of the building in over 15 years, and the back had been abandoned by simply shutting the door on it, for over 20.
Inside the weather and time had created a mess of dirt, roofing tar, and a rotten mess of junk. Birds some as large as vultures had been roosting in the building, and no one had wanted to buy the building for years simply because it looked like too big a project. Making as many arrangements with the city and waste management company as I could before arriving was key, thankfully the city of Groesbeck has been amazing to work with.
The first order of business was to get the large stuff out of the way, ducting, furniture, large chunks of wall that had fallen, and general trash. Then the dirt, trash, rotten books, piles of paper, and broken mannequin parts had to go. Three days, a shovel, a push broom, a sledgehammer, good respirators, some help from my brother-in-law, and the 30-yard roll-off was loaded to the top.
With the container full I spent the rest of the third day moving the remaining loose debris into a pile towards the back of the building and took I measurements for the roof trusses. The next step will be to pull the permits for the roof, order the roofing trusses, plywood, metal, and the rest of the sealant. For the next stage, I will be renting another 30-yard roll-off and a scissor lift, it is going to be a lot of work, but doing it myself will save me a lot of money.
Thanks for following along and be sure to let me know what you think about the building so far in the comments below.
UPDATE: Vintage photo found at the historical society that shows the building when it and the one next door to it were two stories, photo is from before 1910 as the streets were not bricked over yet.
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