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American Press
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- American Press
Passion for preserving: Bell City man gives new life to old furniture, one piece at a time
1/5 Swipe or click to see more Corey Chauvin is recreating an antique pair of bathroom vanities for a Nacogdoches, Texas, homeowner complete with 12-inch barley-twist legs that are being custom-made in Pennsylvania. (Crystal Stevenson / American Press) 2/5 Swipe or click to see more Corey Chauvin is restoring this mid-1800 bar that was created in Lebanon. Only 50 were made and few are left. Inside the cabinet is a built-in turntable and radio. (Crystal Stevenson / American Press) 3/5 Swipe or click to see more Corey Chauvin said his stepfather used this exact model of a Sears Craftsman saw table for his remodeling projects. Chauvin said when he saw this table online for sale, he had to have it. 'I showed my stepdad, and he said, 'Yep, that's the same one.' (Crystal Stevenson / American Press) 4/5 Swipe or click to see more The left section of this three-piece bookshelf built in 1890 once belonged to famed Blue Dog artist George Rodrigue. Corey Chauvin is restoring it for its new owner, who lives in Sunset. (Crystal Stevenson / American Press) 5/5 Swipe or click to see more Corey Chauvin said he's constantly learning and teaching himself new ways of restoring historical pieces. He keeps a copy of 'The Furniture Bible' handy for reference. (Crystal Stevenson / American Press) Corey Chauvin has made a career out of reviving vintage wares and breathing life into sometimes forgotten pieces of history. It's a labor of love, and is something Chauvin does not foresee ever growing tired of. 'I have a background in carpentry and remodeling,' he said. 'Growing up my stepdad did remodeling so all my life I was always around it. I started laying flooring when I was 14 or 15 years old and I always puttered around with woodworking and furniture and building.' His business — Father and Son Creation — came about by accident just over two years ago. 'We started building little knick knack stuff like shelves, planter boxes, cooler stands and then someone I built something for asked me if I repaired furniture. I said, 'Yeah, sure.' ' The customer said his wife inherited an old dresser that had been her aunt's. Made in the 1930s, the wife couldn't bear to part with it, but it wasn't exactly usable either. 'Still to this day, that was my favorite piece I've restored,' Chauvin said. 'I brought it back to him and he said, 'I have several more pieces for you.' That's how this all started. It just fell into place.' Word got out about Chauvin's skills and now his shop is filled with furniture in need of repairing and scraps of wood for carpentry projects he is building from scratch. Alongside his 15-year-old son, the pair diligently scrap away broken veneer and recreate missing or broken pieces of furniture to give new life to historic pieces. 'I'm kind of a history guru and I love the challenge of restoring pieces that were made with tools we don't have anymore,' he said. 'Back then they didn't have stains. They used teas, coffee grounds and the sun to stain wood. Phillips headscrews weren't invented until the 1940s so pieces made before that mostly used flathead screws. And before that, they used hand-cut nails. That's when you get into the 1700s and 1800s. The stuff they did with what they had is astonishing.' Chauvin is in the process of restoring part one of a three-piece bookshelf built in 1890. The owner said the bookshelf had belonged to famed Blue Dog artist George Rodrigue, who kept it in his New Orleans studio. 'They didn't have power tools, saws, nothing,' he said. 'Yet the piece is covered in inlays — which are incredibly hard to do even today. It was all carved by hand.' Chauvin — who does not use chemicals or paint strippers — said he is scraping the original finish from the shelves using sanders and wooden blocks. The new owner wants a natural finish on all three pieces. Chauvin said he's always learning and developing his craft. 'With antiques, if you mess up you mess up bad,' he said. 'If you ruin the finish, ruin the wood you can't just go find another one. I do a lot of research before I start a project and develop a plan of what the customer wants and what's possible.' Chauvin said the process of restoring antique pieces is becoming a lost art. 'There's people who do woodworking, there's people who do furniture but there's not a lot who do antiques anymore,' he said. 'Part of the reason I wanted to start this business is to teach my kids how to do it, and keep them away from too much time with technology and apps.' He said his son is getting the hang of it, but is fearful of making mistakes. ''You're going to,' I tell him. People ask me if I mess up. I say, 'absolutely.' It's part of learning. What do you do when you mess up? Learn how to fix it. I've never destroyed a piece, but I've messed up, I've broken things, I've had to remake things. It happens. But each time I learn how to fix it.' Chauvin's favorite wood to work with is red oak. 'You can do a lot with regular plywood, too. You can use red oak or maple, both of which you can get locally,' he said. 'I'm big on local. I'll pay more for local over ordering. I'm a local business so I want to buy all I can from local businesses, too.' Another piece Chauvin is restoring is a bar built in the mid-1800s in Lebanon. It belonged to the father of a local family who brought the piece with him when he moved to America. Inside the bar's top lid is where bottles and shot glasses are kept. It is lined with glass and the lid has a mirror. Inside the bar's lower cabinet is a turntable and radio — both of which are powered by light bulb electricity. The piece survived a hurricane but has some water damage to the outside doors. It also has sun damage from when it was left outside to dry while the storm-damaged home was being repaired. 'This was the father's prized possession. Every weekend, if they had company over, he would put on his records. They were all in Lebanese so nobody could understand them. He would serve liquor out of this cabinet. The family wants to keep it as original as possible. They only want to replace what we have to.' Chavin said this furniture is one of his 'research pieces.' 'I have to replace the veneer top so I'm trying to find the exact match. Yes, we could totally strip it, add a new finish and make it look like the day it was made but all the character and charm would be gone.' When an antique piece is restored, there is no better feeling, Chauvin said. 'When you spend days, weeks, even months working on it and then it's done, I hate to see them leave sometimes. If I could keep everything, I would keep everything.'
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
I love metro Detroit, but real estate investment proved difficult
To say that I'm a proud metro Detroit native is an understatement. 'A Detroit chauvinist' is closer to the mark. It strains my friends' patience as I extol the brilliant musical performers who called Detroit and its environs home, from Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye to Eminem, Stevie Wonder, Dianna Ross and Madonna. They know about the Motor City, of course, the Corvettes and Cadillacs and Thunderbirds that rolled off assembly lines to become cultural icons – but they're surprised to learn how our auto factories morphed almost overnight during World War II to become the 'arsenal of democracy' producing tanks, bombers, and military Jeeps. Even fewer know that my hometown hosts one of the nation's finest museums at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I also have an especially personal tie to Detroit's renaissance. My older brother, Gerald E. Rosen, was a federal judge who helped lead the city out of bankruptcy as chief judicial mediator. He put together the 'grand bargain' that helped settle Detroit's debts, allowing for large-scale reinvestment. Long removed from living in Michigan, I've remained an avid follower of the Detroit sports teams. My son Julian grew up in a northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., but he became an avid, lifelong Pistons fan who reveled in their 2004 championship. It was little surprise when Julian decided to move to metro Detroit after graduating from college in Virginia. A few years later, having watched him bounce around rental flats, I decided to buy him a home in Ferndale. It was much more than a real estate purchase for me. It was an opportunity to make a concrete investment in metro Detroit's future, just outside a city on the rebound following decades of decay. Little did I know that a bizarre Ferndale zoning issue would make the home difficult to sell down the road, and overly strict code enforcement would discourage me from investing again in Detroit-area real estate. Julian found a home at the intersection of Woodward Avenue and Nine Mile Road. It was a special property – a 1925 Sears Craftsman home built from a prefabricated kit, a rare vintage house with a storied cache. Julian moved in along with his 'homies' – fellow Millennials he chose as roommates – in spring 2017. Over the next seven years, he turned it into a community hub. They became friends with neighbors. A rising singer/songwriter, Julian and other musicians gave impromptu concerts from the lower back roof, with appreciative neighbors clapping and hooting along from their yards. Dealing with the City of Ferndale was another matter altogether. I've owned rental properties in Virginia and North Carolina, but I never encountered anything like the red tape of Ferndale. The rental inspections became almost comical whack-a-mole exercises that far exceeded the laudable goal of ensuring tenants' safety. One year, I was cited for rats. Julian assured me that their source was four dumpsters off my property, used by restaurants backing onto an adjacent alley, but the inspectors rejected this explanation and insisted I hire an exterminator. Showing them a pest-control receipt a few weeks later satisfied them – but didn't stop the rats in the dumpsters. Another year, the problem was a tiny piece of missing siding on the dormer atop the house high above the front porch. Even though it wasn't noticeable without binoculars, Julian and a pal dutifully climbed up and repaired it. Then there were a few items stored beneath tarps up against the back of the house. Hidden from the front, the tarps could only be seen – if you were really looking – from the alley used by the occasional passersby. But they, too, had to be removed along with the items they covered. Yet the rental frustrations paled next to the problems I encountered in trying to sell the house last year after Julian moved to Denver. I quickly got an offer from an out-of-town investor. Weeks later, just a few days before settlement, the investor informed my realtor that his mortgage provider, Chase Bank, had nixed the deal 'because of a zoning problem.' Turns out the lot on which my house was built had been zoned for a parking lot in anticipation of future need to accommodate customers of the restaurants, shops and other establishments lining busy Woodward Avenue. When my house was built a century ago, it was the Roaring Twenties, and Henry Ford's Highland Park factory was churning out hundreds of Model T's a day. With hordes of excited new drivers cruising along Woodward, the concern for adequate parking was understandable. Yet the need for new housing in booming metro Detroit was even greater, and somehow a number of homes were built on planned parking lots. When the Chase Bank lenders reviewed my investor's mortgage application, they asked a logical question: If a fire were to burn down my house, how could the new owner be sure he could rebuild it on a lot zoned for parking? I tried but failed to get a logical answer from the City of Ferndale. The best it could do, I was told, was write a letter saying the city 'had no plans' to enforce the zoning designation, with me paying $100 for this fuzzy assurance. Even though the city had known about these zoning contradictions for years, it had done nothing to fix them. The plan, I learned, was to deal with them in a complete overhaul of the Ferndale zoning map. I eventually found a different buyer for my house, only after losing a few thousand dollars in extra mortgage payments. This complex tale has a simple moral: While my love for all things Detroit is unabated, I will never purchase a property in Ferndale again. James Rosen is a former political and Pentagon reporter who earlier covered the collapse of the Soviet Union as a Moscow correspondent. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: I love metro Detroit, but investing proved difficult | Opinion
