Fifth Street Espresso Bar

I recently painted the coffee shop inside the Historic Federal Building in Pueblo, Colorado. With a new tenant it is back in business late in autumn. Here are some before, during, and after photographs of the process with notes:











Previously it had been painted orange. There was paper damage to the sheet rock where something had been pulled down. It had double-sided stick adhesive tabs that would not let go. So I floated that over with broad knife, setting mix and primed it. The result looked like some kind of confused Robert Motherwell painting. A dark red of the owner's choosing was put up as a sample. I also put up a sample that was a dark cherry for comparison and contrast.



I primed over all those when a dark metallic green was chosen out of Ralph Lauren's paint. (There is an accent of Modern Masters copper metallic done in a band above with random brush strokes.)



After the first coat.



Then I brushed the door and randomized the FRP panel that ran up to the chair rail.



To effect a sort of delineation I tried a trick with some Frog-tape at a line perpendicular to the bottom of the header above the bar, it was at 7'6". The owner wanted the texture to be single brush strokes and I couldn't figure how else I would straighten it up, sophisticate it (or even accomplish that) for a wall that ran up nine more feet above the chair rail. I brushed up to that, over-lapping the tape. Then taped to the bottom edge after that dried. Then I removed the top tape, and brushed down overlapping the new tape with the help of two ladders and a plank at about five feet high.



I randomized the magazine rack, perhaps getting a little too strict with the linearity. Everything else was curviliniar. I think it breaks things up though.





After the owner, Todd Pasquin, put up decorative tapestries and the new tenants, Jacob and Cecilia moved in.

I took some additional photos of the Fifth Street Gallery that Starworth Properties leases out. It is my hope that I can assist in promoting it's increased use, and possibly expanding it in the future.



The additional treat of a baby grand piano at present.



A painting by one of the artists whom keeps a studio on the second floor, Robert Wands.



The marble-cased end wall to the old post office, and the entrance to John Wark's Giclee print shop. He leases the giant sorting room on the main floor in the "new" part of the building built during the 1930's, and turns a healthy business here reproducing all manner of two-dimensional artworks and photography.



The long look back through that same door. You can just make out the tall Christmas tree in the east part of the lobby. It's quite a wonderful space kept with loving care by the owner.

Art Gallery Space Expansion Sketches

I've drawn up some sketches of an expansion plan to The 5th Street Gallery, which is set up in the Historic Federal Building. It would incorporate parts of the old Post Office lobby that was the access to the mail boxes. It would mean either acquiring or building portable, collapsible walls, seven that would be freestanding except for attachment to one side at the pilasters, and seven that would cover the old post office box walls, making that area usable for exhibition. The usable space would be approximately 1,900 square feet total. The space is also quite well lit during the day by the high ceiling, but some sort of lighting will have to be introduced for any presentation in the evening.

"Free" Stone Masonry~ Surveying For Google Earth Modelling

In re-assignment to work on the Historic Federal Building in Pueblo, Colorado I found that there were no corresponding American Institute of Architect models of buildings. This does not compare well to even one town further north, Colorado Springs, which has many only in the Google Earth programming online.

To that effect, I am trying to D-I-Y a model drawn up with the skills I have accrued in drawing with Google Sketchup 6. If there are any interested parties whom would like to assist in this project I am be able to share some of the information from the blueprints to which I have access. The past two weeks my spare time has been devoted to scanning some of these blueprints at our local Kinkos. They's been instrumental in re-assessing all the free masonry for which there are no working drawings. From four elevation drawings I have found that there are 30 individual styles of stonework. Some recurring in use, some bespoke, such as the eagle figures over shields or chevrons above the Main Street entrance. It will be my attempt to catalogue all these on the building , draw them accurately, faithfully, and maybe write a book about the whole inventory process. Perhaps someday such information may be useful towards cast stone replication.

Below are my intial efforts in drawing of some of the cornice work. (Yesterday before sunset I was even up on an extention ladder verifying measurements to get some of the mysteries solved.)



A mid-summer portrait in the early afternoon from the east.



An improvised photograph of one of the renderings in the basement file, probably dating back to when work was done to add onto the building during the 1930's.



A photo import from my Google Sketchup drawing showing attempts to use cut and paste imposition. The camera distortion proved to be to great at this juncture.



My first side-by-side comparisons of all three, contemporary photo, photo of rendering, and Sketchup drawing. From the ground up this must be what it is like to begin writing a novel.



The intensity of the first targetted area, the first floor cornice banding with the second floor.



Rudimentary first sketch incurring questions of distorted dimensions.



Second sketch after verification, incurring even more desire for clarity!