Reclaim and Repurpose
Since our inception, we have been committed to creating space for our community to gather. This was in fact the original passion fueling our business and has remained one of our core values. When the opportunity arose to renovate a building on our square… we knew it was a perfect fit and dove in headfirst. Similar to our newly acquired building, our downtown was once a vibrant display of life, commerce, growth, and a bright future. It was in fact the center of our community, and we now had the chance to join a few other committed business owners in a concerted effort to restore our downtown to the potential we all knew it had. This was a massive undertaking (much larger than we originally anticipated), but with the help of the talented crew at Crownover Inc. and our gracious community, the dream was coming to life.
It was our desire to preserve as much of the character of the building as possible which led us to searching for creative ways to salvage, reclaim, and repurpose as much of the original material as was feasible. I remember late one evening, shortly after the interior demo was complete, I was walking through the shell of the building with my sister... something that became a very common occurrence throughout the renovation. We were brainstorming and dreaming up new ways to embrace the uniqueness of the existing structure and the balcony soon to be built on the front of the building. As we discussed the outside, I let her know that we were unfortunately going to have to remove the sidewalk street lamps in order to brace the second story balcony. I quickly moved on to the next topic of discussion when my sister stopped me and said… “but that lamp HAS to go inside somewhere”. It only took me a minute to realize… wow, she couldn’t be more right! We eagerly began to discuss the possibilities in hopes that we could make it work somehow. We didn’t know the how or the where… but we knew that repurposing the lamp inside would be a perfect way to invite the beauty and history of downtown into our space. After a few more collaborating sessions, it was settled… the only space deserving of this streetlamp was directly behind our bar, in between our beer menu boards. What was once helping people to navigate the darkness on the Northeast corner of the square, is now helping them navigate which beer is right for their taste buds. This repurpose was quite possibly one of our favorites and will forever live behind your favorite Rapp’s bar tender.
Many thanks to the following:
- The City of Mountain Home for allowing us to purchase the lamp.
- Thompson Electric for rewiring to fit our needs.
- Lance with Crownover Co. for taking 2’ of height off without losing any of the originality. Your skills never ceased to amaze!