From the Todd Frey Institute of Higher Learning - How to Polish a Turd

Sorry about the bad title. I worked for hours trying to come up with a more suitable alternative but it was all in vain. In reality it’s a very appropriate title for the content though so bear with me.



No carriage blog today. We are off on a different topic just for a day but ride it out. There is a tie in. A carrot at the end of the stick. Maybe I’ll even do a weekend blog to make up for it. If there was ever a more appropriate property to be described as a “turd” I’d like to see it. It was long, brown, and smelled funny. This building was our most recent renovation project. I think it was about a year ago that our current tenant moved into this property.



If you were in Columbus and down on your luck. This was your house. Didn’t matter if someone else was living there already. They would let you move in too. Busted, wasted, or on the run it was the place to land in Columbus. This lovely little place was right around the corner from our showroom in downtown Columbus.



But I knew this sorry little shack had hope. It’s going to take some work but it has potential. It’s in a nice little spot with some grass along one side. It could look like a old fashioned commercial building I thought. So last summer we decided to dive in head first.



My schedule was so tight I never took any progress photos but this is the finished product. We pretty much ripped out the entire front wall of the building. Installed the windows, new door and the wrap around porch. Believe it or not the interior was not horrible. Not beautiful but not horrible. We had to do some renovations add a rest room and a second exit but all in all the inside was pretty workable.



Now for the tie in. This building was originally a shoe and harness repair shop. So there you go. It turned into a carriage blog today after all. Sorry, not much of a carrot but now what can you do about at this point anyway. Cheryl picked the colors and finishes for the exterior (interior too) and as usual did a great job. No vermillion on this project though. We leased the property to a local hair stylist looking to relocate. It has been the perfect place for her and it is working out nicely.

I’m off to the races. Busy on the Brewster park Phaeton and Whiskey today. I’ll probably post a blog sometime over the weekend with some progress shots.

Have a great weekend.

Best!
Todd