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Building Front 2012.jpeg

In 2010, we completed all the revovations we started in May of 2000.

We re-bricked the front, side and replaced the roof of our location at 159 E. Main St., St. Clairsville, OH.

The picture at the left shows the building today.

There are more photos of the 2000-2001 renovation on Facebook.


Follow along with our reconstruction of the building

we bought in May of 2000.

See us transform "this old wreck" into a state of the art multimedia production facility.

While this location incorporates the innovations of the 21st century,

it still has the look and feel of a turn of the 19 th century building.

new building frontNew building frontThis is a view of the location from main street in St. Clairsville in 2001 and 2011. We have completed the street side facade of the renovation and completed the rear exterior and all of the interior renovations.
former kitchen-new control roomWe were fortunate that Bertie's boys Mike, Tommy and Dave were willing to begin the demolition. Mike brought Kenny Stump to help and they started by removing the remains of an old chimney in the former kitchen. This shot was taken before they started. The bricks they removed were later used to repair the west wall. Dave Iofrate of Al's Masonry undertook that job. They replaced bricks then covered them with a custom mixture of quickwall with added acrylic to add strength. Within one year, it started to crumble.We were forced to tear the wall down in 2009 and re-brick it.
termite damage.jpgWe were having trouble locating a contractor willing to work on an old building. Several suggested simply tearing the building down and start anew. The catch being that this would cost in the neighborhood of $200,000.00. That was simply out of the question.

At that point, Dennis Bigler, the service director of the City of St. Clairsville sent a guardian angel to rectify this problem.

Jim Behl the owner of ESV-Enchanted Sound and Video was walking up main street from the new location to the old building, when someone in a red Dodge flagged him down. This stranger said "Hi I'm Tim Porter and I'm here to do your building." This was the real beginning of the new ESV building. As you can see though the building was over built, the termites reduced 8x8s to 3x3s weakening the structure substantially. Kenny always had the same answer when asked what could be holding up whatever we were currently working on at the time. ARR! (That's air for those of you who are not from Virginia, like Kenny is).

floor removed from control roomThe crew has removed the floor from what will become the control room. There were multiple floor layers and termite destroyed sills and floor beams. Lots of weight and little else. No support or structure. So we decided to demolish the entire floor. Tim has his work cut out for himself.

With Kenny's help Tim replaced the joists and put in a new subfloor with a concrete board preparing it for the eventual tile floor that would be in the control room.

falling down foundationNot only were the beams, sills and floors bad, but when there is a bow in a wall; there is usually one primary suspect. Yes the "f" word; foundation. As you can see from this picture, ours had problems. You may have heard of rubble stone foundations. Our's was simply rubble. "The Bertie Boys" dug out a ditch for french drain. While the ditch was open they repointed the stones in the foundation wall.
new foundation under constructionKenny, Mike and Tom are in the process of pouring steel re-enforced concrete cap on the newly re-laid foundation wall. Once the concrete cured, Tim built new sills of treated 2x12 to build the new control room and studio walls.
control room framingThis shot shows you the framing of the control room with the new subfloor. Shortly after this was taken, the far wall, just outside the framing was just too far gone and one evening it simply went away. This left us with the open air look at least on three sides. Perhaps by now you are thinking maybe we should have torn it down. Hang in there. We did and you'll be able to judge for yourself if it was wise. Oh yeah, we probably should have told the guys from CMT Electric that we took the wall down that they were going to use to put the meter socket and new service panel on.

Chad of CMT at 7:00 am, "Where is our wall?!"

new power being installedMike and Skip of CMT Electric pondering the philosophical meaning of missing walls and powering up the new ESV building for the first time. There are many wires and circuits to go. Smoke detectors, security, communication, networking, audiovisual all add up to a state of the art facility.
Tommy in safety gear.jpgTom Mamie in safety gear after demolishing the second floor ceiling. As you can plainly see there is just a small amount of coal dust up there. There was simply no choice. Once again it had to go.
Control room insulation.jpgWe have started to insulate. The outside walls have been insulated to R19 on the ground floor. The second floor is only 2x4 studwork so we were limited to R11. The attic was insulated to R30.
upstairs HVAC.jpgThis shot of the second floor shows some of the ductwork being installed by Fireplaces 'n' Fixin's for the new HVAC system. We used two furnaces, one in the basement serving the first floor; one on the second floor. The ground floor system is a 90% efficient and the other is an 80% model.
Low voltage cabinet.jpgThis is a shot of the low voltage hub cabinet. It is where all the communication, av, networking and light fiber cables terminate.
Low voltage Cable runs.jpgThis is a view of the low voltage cable runs. It gives you an idea of the kind infrastructure required to make a building suitable for a business in the 21st century. Light fiber, CAT 5e, CAT 3, CATV and Audiovisual cables run throughout the building, making it easy to connect conveniently nearly everywhere, without cables being visible. Wireless has changed the necessity for much of this.
Tim Porter Installing DrywallHere Tim and Kenny install drywall on the hall wall around the decorative octagonal window.