Byron Reed Company has recently purchased and begun renovations on a new property. The journey towards re-birth has many steps, but, in the end we will be left with a truly beautiful property and we will have done some good for the city of Omaha.

Recently we have been discussing how to get the word out about our new project. That's when it hit me, if we really want to get the word out about this then we need to get people involved in the process. We need people to see what we are doing and get excited about it! With this idea in mind I thought what could be better than writing a "renovation" blog. Hopefully this blog accomplishes just that, you will be interested in what we are doing and feel like you are right along with us for the ride.

Inflation???

The Maryland Apartment House was originally constructed in 1910 and cost a mere $14,000.00 to complete. $14,000.00, you can just barely purchase a new vehicle for that price today! According to an inflation calculator, the price of construction for the Maryland Apartment House in 2010 would run about $323,436.91. How is that for inflation?

Hey Kool-Aid

On this journey so far we have encountered so many reminders of an era gone by, and not only the economical kind of reminders. We have also found a few other pretty interesting items and architectural features that go way back and not so way back. In one of the units we found a package of Kool-Aid. This is not your standard Kool-Aid packet of today. Actually this Kool-Aid packet dates all the way back to before the pitcher grew arms and legs and started crashing into walls. Bugs Bunny was featured on the particular packet and it wasn't called Kool-Aid, it was called "pre-sweetened" Kool-Aid. The company that manufatures Kool-Aid had to carry that preface until 1969 in order to notify people that it was not sweetened with sugar. 

Embracing The Past

Another example, back in the 1900's lumber and saw mills would actually stamp the name of their mill and the name of the project onto some of the materials. We discovered this when we had to remove a base board.  back of the base board

Let's talk about one more throw back, the sleeping porch. Without air conditioning sleeping, or trying to sleep during the summer months could be pretty uncomfortable. So, some buildings during the early 1900's, including the Maryland, were built with screened in sleeping porches. These are usually located on a second story and frequently built above and existing porch. When we first saw them, we instantly knew we needed to have windows installed and make these into four season rooms. We believe this design choice has really set us apart from other properties in the area.

arts and crafts era sleeping porch.