Watch this interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rufGyJyGhVo
I sit down with Juan Carcaño to discuss historic restoration on the island and what it takes to get it done. We discuss the impact that building restoration for historic preservation has on Galveston's economy.
Immaculate Painting and Construction: https://www.immaculatepaint.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/immaculatepainting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/immaculatepainting/
Galveston Unscripted is your gateway to the heart and soul of Galveston, Texas. Dive into captivating tales of Galveston's history, explore the breathtaking stories, and discover the vibrant cultural gems of Galveston. Subscribe for engaging narratives, exclusive insights, and an immersive journey through the essence of Galveston, Texas. #GalvestonUnscripted #galvestonhistory #texashistory
Subscribe to Galveston Unscripted on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for more historical insights and stories from this remarkable island: https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/podcasts
Check out the podcast and audio tour that is transforming Galveston into the world's largest free museum! https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/
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Watch this interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rufGyJyGhVo
I sit down with Juan Carcaño to discuss historic restoration on the island and what it takes to get it done. We discuss the impact that building restoration for historic preservation has on Galveston's economy.
Immaculate Painting and Construction: https://www.immaculatepaint.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/immaculatepainting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/immaculatepainting/
Galveston Unscripted is your gateway to the heart and soul of Galveston, Texas. Dive into captivating tales of Galveston's history, explore the breathtaking stories, and discover the vibrant cultural gems of Galveston. Subscribe for engaging narratives, exclusive insights, and an immersive journey through the essence of Galveston, Texas. #GalvestonUnscripted #galvestonhistory #texashistory
Subscribe to Galveston Unscripted on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for more historical insights and stories from this remarkable island: https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/podcasts
Check out the podcast and audio tour that is transforming Galveston into the world's largest free museum! https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/
Support the show! Buy me a book! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jrshaw409
Galveston Unscripted Digital Market: https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/store
And you see some of these walls up, you're like man, those bricks were from Europe, these bricks are from Chicago, these bricks are from a fire and they marry them all together and they work and they hold them. And it's the same thing with the people on the island. You drive to the west and you have billionaires. You have people in this building that are building billionaires, and then you have some guy that makes $13 an hour and we all get along.
Speaker 1:This should be. I think should be a case study for how the rest of the country should be ran, because whether it's status, it's name, whatever, this island seems to get along really well, welcome to Galveston Unscripted.
Speaker 2:In this episode I sit down with Juan Carcáñez, owner of Immaculate Painting. For over 24 years, juan and his company have specialized in not only painting but the restoration of historic homes and buildings around Galveston, especially some of Galveston's most famous historic buildings Back then 1911 Galveston Hotel, the 1895 Celian Hutchings Building and many of Galveston's historic churches. What gave me the idea to have Juan on the Galveston Unscripted podcast is I was walking on 19th Street and saw that first Presbyterian church was being worked on and, of course, I saw the Immaculate Painting sign out on the scaffolding. What really struck me as I was looking at the side of this church that was being worked on, is that we're pulling off some of these bricks. When I got to thinking these bricks are the same bricks that Galveston famous architect Nicholas Clayton would have ordered, approved and worked on with his crew to build the 1872 Presbyterian church that we see on Church Street in 19th. And here this church is being restored right in front of us. And how much work that actually takes.
Speaker 2:In the late 1800s, galveston was one of the richest cities in Texas and the country and prior to the storm of 1900, galveston was on the trajectory to become what Houston is today, and if that were the case, there would be plenty of money for maintenance. But of course, the economy in Galveston shifted dramatically through the 1900s and we are truly still lucky to have so many historic buildings in Galveston. Today. Galveston heavily relies on tourism and many people who visit Galveston come to see the historic downtown area and some of Galveston's most historic buildings. But if companies like Immaculate Painting and other restoration companies weren't around to do the work they do, we may not have these buildings for people to come see and enjoy for centuries to come.
Speaker 2:In this episode today, juan and I discuss a little bit about historic restoration, the challenges behind the restoration process and why this little island of Galveston is so unique when it comes to history and economics. As you'll see, juan and I had a lot of fun during this episode and I really hope you enjoy it. To further ado, let's hop right into this episode with Juan Carcogno, owner of Immaculate Painting, specifically hoping to talk about renovation, kind of like what you've been doing for the past, however long you've been doing it A long time, yeah right, a long time and kind of how you got into it and like you can't drive in the downtown area without seeing something that we missed.
Speaker 2:Without seeing Immaculate Painting somewhere you know, so it's really cool.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:When you guys did the Presbyterian Church over there Right. And when I was thinking about it. Well, I want to dive into this a little deeper later, but I was thinking about it, you're working on Nicholas Clayton's architecture and when's the last time those bricks were moved, because I know you guys were doing a lot of work on that.
Speaker 1:Well, when we do a lot of that plaster repair, what happens is that the plaster comes unattached from the brick. 99% of the time it's a movement issue. So whether the building is settling, moving, shifting, I mean everything moves. Semanticious products which are concrete, stucco, plaster, all that stuff is hard, so when it wants to move, all it can do is crack. And then, when you have cracks, you allow water to come in there, and then when the water comes in there, it creates stuff to get bigger, it swells up like wood and then you have problems like that.
Speaker 1:Like you have pointing behind the between the bricks and the tuck point that you have to repair. You have to repair with the right plaster. It's not an art, but there is a little bit of a science too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, it's awesome man. So let's start. Can we start from the beginning? I'm an immigrant. I was actually born in Mexico. Oh, you were.
Speaker 1:I was born in Mexico and I was brought over in the 80s on a work visa and now it's been so many years I can casually say we overstayed our work visa. My dad started working with antique furniture. He started working in Houston. He got a job refinishing antique furniture. So old stuff has been in my veins at all times and that's how we got started in Galveston.
Speaker 1:The guy that owned the peanut butter warehouse, jim I forget his last name and Nathan Sweden. They're the ones that poached my dad from the place where he was selling, where he was restoring furniture. They're like we need you in Galveston, so they opened up shop here.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, working for them, yeah. And then that's back when it was like the literal antique. They had antiques in there, they had all those little shops in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that was in the 80s, and Galveston was very different in the 80s and the 90s.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I want to get into some of those stories too. It was a rough patch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but my dad started doing side gigs with painting houses and he was refinishing furniture, he was painting houses and then that's how we got into the paint business.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And this evolved into what it is now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so did he start Immaculate, or did you?
Speaker 1:start? No, no, he started a business on his own in the early 90s and then, he got sick in 91. He had a brain aneurysm in July and then my mom passed away in September of the same year. So we were orphaned. Essentially, according to the court system, we were orphaned. So we moved to Mexico and when I was living in Mexico because my uncle couldn't afford it, my uncle, who basically took custody of us, couldn't afford to have us two households here his house and our house.
Speaker 1:So he moved us to Mexico for affordability and that's when I started getting into the business side of things. My grandmother was a Mexican medicine woman, so she was always hustling and she would make anything, and so that's where I got the business concept. My uncle stays behind. He starts with my dad's footsteps, also painting houses on the side. When I get out of high school, we start his business, which is Triple C de Colores, and he passed away in 04, I take over some of his clientele and then now we're here, 20 years later.
Speaker 2:Man, what a story. It's dramatic, it's very dramatic. I like the abbreviated version though.
Speaker 1:That's great. It's the clip notes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, so for a little bit of context, you do, painting you do. I want to say renovation. Is it renovation? Or what all does immaculate paint do?
Speaker 1:I think it's more restoration.
Speaker 2:Restoration.
Speaker 1:Okay, and it's not correcting you. I think that's how, that's what I feel we do yeah. We restore older buildings. We've always like I said, it's in my veins, my parents restored furniture, houses. We restore buildings now, but we also do an niche side, which is waterproofing. So a lot of these buildings that are older need to be as tight from water as possible to avoid having more problems in the concrete and your steel and your wood, all that stuff. That's one side of the that's the side of the business we're talking about now.
Speaker 2:When I think about historic preservation and like the effort that, let's say, you go back to the 1970s the Galveston Historical Foundation, they started like purchasing buildings all over this island, yep, and you get into historical preservation, restoration, things like that, and you just think of it as like throwing money at it. You don't really think about the work that's done to preserve these buildings, the bricks, the you know everything that's kind of inside or behind. You don't think about that. So you know, and what really gave me this idea to have you on is when you, you guys were working on that Presbyterian church and, like I said earlier, like it's a Nicholas Clayton building design and he, you know, he was the one who put the bricks there, but he was the one who designed it, his guys, he was there supervising it and and it's kind of a cool thing where you guys get to put your hands on the history.
Speaker 1:To me. It's funny you say that. To me it's almost a respect thing. It's almost like I've been around the island and I've seen what it's evolved into and it's it's to me I'd rather. There's an old saying that I'd rather do everything myself because I know I'm gonna do it right, but I know that I'll have more respect and it's somewhat of a love connection to the buildings. It sounds ridiculous to a lot of people, but I have so much respect for these buildings and the preservation and what has what has happened with Galibre, like I said, for the last 30-40 years that I think that you almost have to be that passionate and that crazy about loving a building, walking by and touching, to be like, oh, what is?
Speaker 1:that made out of yeah Is that plaster or is that concrete stuck? Oh, I see a patch. Did they seal those windows correctly? You know, it's like I take it very personal, yeah, and that's. I think that's kind of the crazy that you have to be, to be in the side of the business that we're in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what are some of the main, I guess, prominent structures on the island that you've worked on in the past few years?
Speaker 1:We call it the Sealy Building over here on 24th and. Strand, presbyterian Church, 1st Lutheran Church. We've done a lot of churches. The I-Bands building were currently there. Obviously, the Galvestre, that was a big one. We had, I think, about 4,000 gallons of paint going that bad, but we painted it twice in one year. That's a story in itself.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us the Galvestre, because that's fascinating.
Speaker 1:Well, we were working with the Mitchells and they were in the middle. I think they were in the middle of restoring it to sell. I think that's what I can say now. I didn't know what was going on at the time.
Speaker 1:But they, they, they have a bunch of windows that need caulking and sealing and sealing the outside, and we're going blowing through it. We've got about, I think, 600 cubic feet of repairs on the building. Oh my gosh, we're doing a lot of stuff, yeah. So we're exactly three quarters of the way there and they're like, hey, the building is selling. And I'm like, well, I haven't finished painting it. Oh, don't worry, we're carrying. The remainder of your contract is getting carried over to the next, to the future owner. So I say, okay, as long as I'm getting paid. You know, to me it's green, I don't care.
Speaker 2:And we're pink.
Speaker 1:Pink. Yeah, that's where I was going to start. So come to find out, the guy buys it and he tells, and he contacts me. And Mark buys it. And he contacts me and he says, hey, I want to paint the Galvest pink. And I'm like, okay, I've heard crazier stories, but let's do it. I'll say, but we just finished painting it, I want to paint it all over again. And I tell people all the time that the paint wasn't even fully dry when we started painting again. So we went around twice. We caught a lot of grief from the locals, from the non-locals, from the Houston people. People were calling the office like what are y'all doing? Y'all should be ashamed of yourself. And I'm like it's pink, because the first pink color that went up was literally Pepto Vismol pink.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ugly. Yeah, it was so ugly. It was in fashion in 1911.
Speaker 1:Yes, but the color that's on there now is actually the Beverly Hills Hotel. Oh really that crazy. I give it to Mark. He has a vision that is not understood by many, but the guy went to the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Speaker 1:He stayed in the room tried to pop open a window so he could get a sample, so he can do it. So he sneaks all the way down to the maintenance dungeon and he talks to the maintenance guys. He goes I need the color, and he sends me a picture from down there with the picture with the logo on it and the formula, and we match it and that's the color that it is.
Speaker 2:No freaking way, that guy's wild From Beverly Hills to Galveston. That is wild dude.
Speaker 1:That's exactly how he did it.
Speaker 2:Oh my God. So you mentioned earlier how everything kind of shifts around here, like the ground shifts. We're on a sandbar. Things are moving around all the time, absolutely.
Speaker 1:If you have a structure that's made out of concrete mainly, or hard materials like cementitious products or like brick, when things shift in one corner it has to give Like, there has to be a flexibility. So if there's not, back in the days they weren't taken into account movement, so there isn't control joints. You'll see, if you see a tilt up wall building which is a big think of an Amazon warehouse, it has these creases in it and those creases are actually points that are flexible.
Speaker 1:So they're filled with the urethane or an MP1 or a silicone, and what that does is there's a backer in there that's made out of foam and what that does is it allows for physics to do its thing. You know, in the summer they get bigger, in the winter they get smaller, so you have that movement. These older buildings didn't have that in place. So when the building shift, you're going to have some kind of cracking and then, like I said, that cracking allows water to get in. It allows moisture to stand behind between the brick and the plaster or the brick and the stucco, and that's what you have delamination of the product.
Speaker 1:If you have solid concrete, like beams or pier or something like that, then when that moves you create a crack and the water gets in there. Same thing, but the water around here is corrosive, the humidity around here is corrosive. So it gets into the steel. Yeah, once it gets into the steel, it creates corrosion, which is what we call rust. So when steel rusts, it gets bigger, it fattens up because it creates these layers and what that does is that it separates the steel from the concrete, which is called spalling.
Speaker 2:Oh OK.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's where and we're good at repairing those, those kind of things.
Speaker 2:Nice, yeah, you're the man to call.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't say that. I've been in the business long enough. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:For sure. Well, experience is key.
Speaker 1:I'll say that yeah.
Speaker 2:So what is some? What has been the most difficult restoration that you've done here on the island?
Speaker 1:Difficult, I don't know. I think that probably the back wall, which is the west facing wall on the Clarkin Court building.
Speaker 2:OK, ok.
Speaker 1:Because it has so much history and there were three commissions built into that commission. There was obviously the HOA that had to say so. And then you have the historical commission, which says what kind of material you can use.
Speaker 1:And then there's also I can't remember if it was glow or Texas land office, one of those big ones that was adamant that we don't not touch the sign on there and we don't restore it. We don't touch it, we don't destroy it, I'll turn nothing. So it was very intense. There was a lot of eyes on this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and because that sign is painted onto the brick right.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah, so we work. You're working around a painting on the brick that you have to work on, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then you are on top of a roof, hanging off from another roof. So axis is hard. The weather was. We got here with two hurricanes on that job yeah, two, I mean the hurricanes were around us, but I mean we had to break everything down, take everything off the roof. Now, that has to be. That was the one that's more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. When people think of restoration, I guess you don't think about the kind of that aspect of it too, just logistically.
Speaker 1:Logistically. Yeah, it's a nightmare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the different organizations you have to work with during hurricane season. You're going to be. We got to stop this right now. You know we'll start up next week when the hurricane passes, I guess.
Speaker 1:Well, and that all takes time, and time equals money. And you know, a lot of people see these gigantic profits, the gigantic jobs, that they think they're gigantic profits and they're not. I mean you have to. Sometimes you eat it and you're like, well, here's a hurricane, you have to eat a week of labor up, like week labor down, and again you have to almost love it to be doing it, because I promise you I'm not doing it for the money. I mean there's, there's money in it, but I mean yeah exhibit a over here.
Speaker 2:I know, trust me, do you guys ever find anything super interesting, like in on interior walls or anytime you pop something open? Maybe the way a something was connected that you cannot do today like engineering wise?
Speaker 1:Yes, just rebar alone. Just rebar was I mean right now you just got schedule five rebar. That goes on. Everything it's five, eight, seven inch, three quarters of an inch and the rebar back in the days an inch and a quarter. Good luck trying to cut through that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Same thing with concrete, old concrete. I mean you take a chisel outside and break a piece of concrete on something new and new, pour something the last 10, 20 years, but you get into that older concrete. I don't know if it's just more dense, I'm not a chemist, but it never ceases to fast to to us. It amazed me how hard that stuff is. It's just hard and we, we run into a lot of math on the walls.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:We run into a lot of math. When we did the Henley building, there was all kinds of math. When we did the inside of the Henley building, downstairs there was. I guess a guy had a running tab on people and he had. He had numbers scrolling down where this guy owes me $2 and this guy owes me $2. And but he wrote it on the wall.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, never go away, dude. That is fascinating, it was really cool. So you worked on the Henley building? Yes, we did, dude. So which side?
Speaker 1:We worked on the ground floor.
Speaker 2:OK, gotcha, gotcha. Well, it's fast. It's really cool because the Henley building is interesting, because it was a played a major part in a major Civil War battle, that a lot of people don't even realize that we had Civil War battles here in Galveston. You're working on stuff like that with that much history.
Speaker 1:Ironically enough, my first job was at the peanut butter warehouse, which my parents worked at as well, but I worked in the candy shop. So the peanut butter warehouse, to stay true to its name, had a little shop that made peanut butter. We would ship it all over the country and they would have these risk cracker treats, all kinds of weird stuff that we would make in house fudge brownies. So that was my first job and I would. I worked there and the Henley building was kind of catty corner from it and I saw the last time I got hit by a, by lightning, and always knew Mr Henley.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry it wasn't Henley, it was Mr D Mac he had a produce company there and the building was half empty and I always looked at it not knowing what the history was behind it yeah, yeah, man full circle. I'm working on it again. I guess there's always so much you can go on an island, right Like you can work on stuff again and again, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you think about it, business wise, right? You're doing historic restoration Right Now. The restoration you're doing, no matter how good it is, we are still living on a sandbar, hurricane prone sandbar, with corrosive moisture in our air, so you kind of get to rotate from building to building to building, not to give away the secret.
Speaker 1:But that is the secret sauce right there.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I don't do it with pride, I'm just like it's one of those things where you look at it as a long-term relationship and you walk away. You're like should be back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she'll be back.
Speaker 1:And I almost marry every job because I have dinner here, I have my kid goes to school here, I buy stuff from here. So if we try, we really try. There's sometimes we drop the ball. We do things as best as we can, but we really try to keep a good relationship with the buildings and with the tenants and with the owners and all that. So that's hard in itself being on an island.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course, yeah. And then you get the experience of working on that building and naturally, if something goes wrong, you're probably the one they're going to call first to come back, because you have the most recent experience on that building.
Speaker 1:We hope so. Yeah, and that's the same thing with the other side of the business. The other side of the business is park restoration we do water parks and all that. So it's the same thing. You know, by the time one ride is completely, we'll go through five rides and then we'll start again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so tell us about that. How did you get into water park restoration?
Speaker 1:It was. That one was a complete block. They were looking for somebody to help them paint some steel out on a Schlitterbond and the guy called me. I picked up the phone and we went from there. We're still to this day, we're friends and we share a business. That was 15 years, 16 years ago. As we got more into it, we got requests to do more things and we learned the hard way. Like you don't do things this way, you do things, but it's a very, very, very small business.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean not small as far as like the scale, it's just there's not a whole lot of people doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right yeah.
Speaker 1:There's also some tricks of the trade in there, and but it's the same way as it is with these buildings. It's more about the relationship, the customer of the relationship with you. Know you walk away. You're like, well, I would. Would I let my kids slide down this slide? Is it safe? Is it? Is it? Do we do everything right? And that's what you know makes you lose a little sleep, but I wouldn't do anything, anything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love to. Yeah, yeah, well, seems like you you care about what you do. I try a bit like quite a bit.
Speaker 1:So a lot you love it. It's really bad on your relationships and your health, but yeah right, I know.
Speaker 2:So tell me about the guy. I mean the team you have working with you. So you got a pretty large team, I would imagine, to work on these jobs.
Speaker 1:We fluctuate between 10 to 25 guys, so it depends on the season. Galveston a seasonal, so when we, when we man up we bring but we don't, we were very selective. So a lot of, a lot of our guys are Second, third generation Masons.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, Okay so they are, they are, they are. They already know what to do. It's just getting the right formulas. You know the brick mortar that's between the bricks, it's not you don't just go buy it back at home people or mix it like you would anything there's. There's a certain standard you have to meet for it to, to adhere to the next brick where you're not doing any repairs to. And at the same time I kind of handpicked my guys just because it's Galveston. You know there's people walking down with you know Having a vacation, and may they, they might look at us and and they might just say, oh well, we don't care about your job, they'll walk through it.
Speaker 1:We want guys to be polite, we want guys to be respectful, but we also want guys to take pride in their work. So it's it's. It's been hard, but I think I told my secretary the other day I think we have the best team I've had in 20 years. That's amazing. It is, it is that's another thing.
Speaker 2:With experience, too, you got to curate your team. Yeah right, because these are the guys you are working with every day. Yeah right, because you're you're going around from job site to job site, but you're working with these guys every day, so communication.
Speaker 1:I learned a long time ago that guys that are really good or are really probably proud of what they do and pride has a direct correlation. To just leave the guys alone, yeah right, so he's. If the guy's proud and he's good and he's clean and he's he's on time, oh, I don't even tell the guy. I mean, this is what we're going to do from this day to Wednesday. Check in with me, I'll check in with you and just kind of let them do their thing. And I Promise you, jr, aside from making the transition to being Everything on paper, to digital, mm-hmm, that's the hardest transition delegate Really when she gets to a point where you're like I can't handle it all anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have to delegate stuff. Oh yeah, it's like letting your kid drive. It's just so scary hey.
Speaker 2:That's some good advice, some good business advice. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:You'll be there, yeah, yeah. Well, we're getting there. So.
Speaker 2:Got a two more kids coming soon, so it's gonna be a little. So, beyond buildings, you're doing it. Do you do homes as well? Not anymore.
Speaker 1:Okay, and the only reason and I would love to, because I love Galveston homes and there's. I go to other cities and I look at the architecture and I'm like, hey guys, what?
Speaker 2:what are you impressed by, like I'm?
Speaker 1:used to work walking in these houses where you know they have like a secret cubby, or you walk and everything squeaks and it smells like the houses have a smell here that you can't get. You can probably get in Carolina's you know stuff like that but to find it here in Texas it's just hard.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Um, unfortunately, because of the cost of doing work on commercial stuff, the overhead gets really heavy, get really big. So we become, we've gone to a point where we can't compete twice.
Speaker 2:I see, I see, okay, so it makes sense to specialize then, yeah, yeah so it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not a selection. I try to keep it alive as long as I could, because I painted a lot of house on the west and a lot of house on the east Then, when I was still doing residential, but it became just it, just. I couldn't make a profit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense I.
Speaker 1:I try to give them the same attention and love that. That I've given every job. And once you start disconnected from that, a Lot of people take that as a sign of you're too good for me or you've moved on and blah, blah, blah. But you get some criticism. But I mean, it's part of business, yeah, have to have all.
Speaker 2:Criticism is part of business.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's part of life, it is not getting criticized.
Speaker 2:You're probably not doing much. That's awesome, man.
Speaker 1:Any any notable stories you have about that you can tell about working on some of these historic buildings downtown aside from aside from the traffic being weird, like there's some days where you'll have 10,000 people down in the strand, of some days where you'll have two people I think that the the the cool stories are is is hearing the stories from the owners, like how they acquired the building. Well, this was some X bar, or this was some brothel, or this was this, this was that. But no, I mean, we were always amazed of like I'm that guy, I'm, I'm we call it a towel guy.
Speaker 1:We get there, I'm like oh my god, I can't believe they did this and we'll find. We'll find lead on some stuff that was supposed to be restored and then we tested and they're still lead on there. So we have to shut the whole job down and mask everything off correctly. But Other than that, no, I wish I had some cooler stories.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I was thinking like busted a wall open and, like me, like, oh my god, there's a safe in here, or something.
Speaker 1:Well, no, we were always there too late for that.
Speaker 2:Maybe owners take over that part, yeah, so for work on like big, a big, beautiful brick churches they. I guess how long will that work last?
Speaker 1:so standards, business standards say five to ten years on something where we are and that you're taking into account, I think we have the highest solidity Solidity rating in the Texas coast. There's been I don't have that right off top my head, but there's been some of that so corrosion is huge around here. Humidity is always 100%, even right now it's. It's pretty human. So if we go above and beyond, we could probably get 10, 15 years out of it. Once you start, once the paint starts, dying is what we call it. There's solids in the paint that are titanium dioxide, glycol little elements that that die with the UV. It's not that they die because they're exposed to the elements is died. They die because the UV or killing them. Once you rub your hand on on painting it's chalking you can bring the color with you. Then that paint is dead and needs to be restored.
Speaker 1:Got you so usually the those guys say Five to ten years here. So we like to aim for 10 to 15.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice, okay, great, great. Yeah, it's just, it's funny. What do you think about? You know, 150 years ago, 120 years ago, when they were building a lot of these buildings, you think about how much work it takes to maintain some of these buildings and Galveston me in the city, it was with so much money and and just Money flowing through this place. They're like, yeah, there'll be no problem to maintain. You know no big deal. And then you fast forward to now, when you have it's a, it's heavily a tourism economy here. You think about, like, how hard it is to actually maintain these buildings these days, that up the age they are and everything like that.
Speaker 1:So well, it only gets harder because because now there's, it's like a human being, you know, as you get older, stuff just doesn't heal us as well, but if you have a maintenance plan in place, there's a lot of people here believe it or not the mentors are one of them that have the vision to where they. They can allocate funds for five, ten, fifteen years from now, or they rotate funds. I'm not sure how, how their money gets managed, but I think that, with it being a tourism hub, it also attracted some very intelligent people, some people that are they're willing to put everything on the line to preserve things, and I think that the funds are starting to move in the right direction. Compared to the strand in the 90s, it was rough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and what?
Speaker 1:what it's become now? It's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's unrecognizable from when I you know, was born in the 90s, lived here.
Speaker 1:It's unrecognizable for now as a kid.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it's amazing to see. It really is amazing to see. But back to the economics of it, of it's a heavy tourism city. Now, right, a Lot of people are coming here for the historic buildings that are here, or at least to be in an area that is deemed historic right. So the downtown area and what you're doing is Extremely important to the economy here. It really is because you're keeping these buildings From falling apart falling down, you know.
Speaker 2:So really is a huge economic driver in that I guess I never saw it that way.
Speaker 1:I really, I really didn't, because I've always seen it from Kind of one of my what service I'm providing to the customer, but I never saw it as that. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's why it's so important.
Speaker 1:It's why people are willing to pay you to do that services, because if these buildings aren't here, you won't have as much draw just I love the island and there's there's people that criticize me for Friends, that criticize me for living here, and I'm like I just there's. There's just a way of I get to run my business from here, I get to live here. I also get to party here, I get to have fun. I've developed some good friends. I don't I don't live in Houston.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, I agree in suburbia, in suburbia, yeah, I just don't know.
Speaker 1:Cut out for that no no, this is.
Speaker 2:It's just such a unique place yeah, it really is and, of course, probably for this audience as an echo chamber, because they probably live here, live near here, so like.
Speaker 1:Exactly. That's one thing that I can't. I just can't fowl him. As you know, you used to be able to pick up a house 5075k yeah you can't touch anything for 300k around here, dude.
Speaker 2:It's nice. When we bought our house in 2020, we were like we were. Why are we paying this much for a house?
Speaker 1:in 2020?.
Speaker 2:And now you look at the home, prices are like, oh wow, we might have gotten off cheap, but it's. It's crazy to see and to see the economy grow. The economy and population in Houston expand and expand south. You get more daytrippers here. You get just more general foot traffic and traffic here in Galveston which is directly proportional to the economy and the economic growth to this city. Not to mention the cruise lines that are coming through that huge factor.
Speaker 1:I never saw the, the end game which I think we're seeing now. This is the end game where you know, I think, what's second or third biggest cruise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fourth, soon to be third.
Speaker 1:Yeah just just the expansion. I mean, there's billions of dollars rolling, oh dude it's whether whether you're, you're paying $2 to park or $5 to unload your vehicle or whatever it's. The money kind of stays around here.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, that's fascinating to me yeah, it really is. Yeah, for my economics brain it's like no, no and really cool. Most people don't see it.
Speaker 1:Most people don't see all the inner workings and those. You know that creates tax dollars and that creates jobs and that creates, hopefully, a better I don't know better economics for the city, because you could say whatever about Galveston, but as far as the services go, we've always kind of been behind. You know, to dig up the street, yeah, have to go 400 feet underneath and pull out the cast iron and, you know, put in new stuff and then you hit a water table every three feet. You know 23rd Street.
Speaker 2:That was a fun one to watch, I was like holy. The loss by you. Someone found it.
Speaker 1:And there was no, no pot of gold or anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, jean-lafey's trip is there, okay? So before we wrap up, is there anything else you wanted to Talk about? Or maybe I didn't ask you about the type of work you do?
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't think so. I think it. I wish there was more, maybe architecture education, not that the architects here don't know what they're doing, I don't mean it that way. I think that people should realize that some of these bricks were brought in from Europe in the holes of bolts to Way down the boats, and then they were filled with cotton or sand to weigh them down, to go back, and Some of these bricks are, you know, came. I don't know what the distance is between here in Europe, you know six thousand miles or ten thousand miles, and yeah, they're still there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a lot of solidity that came from Hurricane Ike is still present. If you walk into some of these older buildings, you'll see a clear line where it's like the break is is dying because all that salt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it just ate it alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a. There's still a lot to do, though I hope that there's Programs that can be extended through a GHF or the General Land Commission or whoever whomever to protect this, because this is a one-shot deal. I mean, you can't. You can't rebuild these things you, can't you can take them all apart and put them back together, but you take the essence out of yeah, yeah, exactly, I think that's what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know for you. You mentioned, like bringing bricks over as ballast on ships, the, just as one example, the st Mary's Basilica, the original building, 1850s building. They shipped all of those bricks from Belgium see over 500,000 bricks see from Belgium.
Speaker 1:I think, I think there's a lot of people like you and I that like those kind of statistics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or what yeah?
Speaker 1:I want to know more about it. Yeah, I think that would attract a whole different kind of group of people here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, yeah, that architecture, architecture, education architecture education.
Speaker 1:That is directly laced to economics. Economics is really laced, and I think all these buildings are beautiful. I mean if you drive by at night and not that you know that that I'm Fixated on this, on the galvest but if you drive by at night Through the galvest and then you make a left on 19th Street and you see it lit up and then you go down To 19th and you come up to strand you see these buildings and then you see sure moody plows at the end, all lit up.
Speaker 1:I mean this is a beautiful island. And then you go down to go see big rad and you see the Sealy building anything that you know that Clayton touched there's. When I do inspections up and down these buildings, I look at them and I'm like and I'm going up on a heart with a harness, on a you know $100,000 machine and I'm going up and down and I'm like this would take us a year to fix this. How long do you think it took them To build it? Yeah, polish those stones by hands.
Speaker 2:Can you?
Speaker 1:have grinders back. They know some guy peddling or something. He was just grinding those kind of those, those pieces stone up and they put them on. They all look good. You know, hundred hundred, twenty years later, they all look really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think I have a new girl. Respect every time I go up those buildings.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. It's amazing to think about the construction. Yes, of these buildings yes it really, really is, and to think about, like just the idea of it was pretty crazy. Yes, of course they were doing it in New York and of course they were doing it, and you know big cities in the late 1800s. But to think about Building a city on a sandbar in. Texas, just around a port. Here's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1:So crazy guys went out there with a booze. That's why some of these buildings don't line up perfectly, that's the funniest thing too.
Speaker 2:It's like you see the home slightly off kilter. Yeah, you know, and they've moved, I mean you think you gotta think about it.
Speaker 1:There's been some big hurricanes. I mean, you and I have probably witnessed two or three of them. There's been some big hurricanes that have lifted houses and probably shift them around and move them around, and I think, I think that I'm glad, I'm I'm glad and I'm sad at the same time that that Galveston kind of went under the radar for a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah and now that it's kind of discovered TV shows and people with big pockets, it's kind of driven out when made Galveston real but it's also brought in people that have a huge respect and hopefully have a little more Love for what they're getting into and restore it and maintain it and you know, yeah, and money, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:It always say it takes money. It really does take money. So yeah, man you, what you're doing is important. Thank you what you're doing is awesome. It's so fascinating. I can't wait to come out on a job with you sometime we have.
Speaker 1:We have one. We have one coming up.
Speaker 2:I'm ready to come out customs house right now dude, I would love to Film just some of what you do like, just some of it to kind of talk about the restoration process and how important it is and how Detail-oriented you have to be to restore. That you know well.
Speaker 1:Again, we take a lot of pride in our work and we don't always get it, like I said, a hundred percent right.
Speaker 1:This has been a lot of trial and error. This is kind of a we didn't go to, you know, be an apprentice for a Mason that's been a five-year of five generation Mason in the West Coast or the East Coast. We don't, we don't, we don't have that privilege. So we tried to do it as respectfully as possible. We research, we abide by the architecture rules. When the architects involved he tells us we have to do things a certain way, we do it that way, and I think that that might be one of the things that keeps me business.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, so you mentioned you have fifth generation mason's or third generation mason's from Mexico. Mm-hmm. I you think about Mexico, some of the cities, if people haven't traveled to Mexico. Some of the cities in Mexico have wonderful architecture, mm-hmm most of the most of the big cities in Mexico. It's unbelievable. I've never traveled in interior Mexico, but you, you kind of see it on on TV or on the internet. You're like, oh my god, I tell you where to start Mexico City.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's simple just go to Mexico City and just look at the buildings there and you'll be like how they this stone is not natural to here and you'll see a lot of buildings tilting because it's also sitting on this that one's Sitting on the lake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so crazy how Mexico City is built on a lake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is nuts go up to Chep with the back and I. We and I were interacting, we were sending messages back and forth when, I was there and I was looking at it from a restoration Point, but I was also looking at it from a building point and if you just see the labor and detail that went into the hinges to the doors, you can't even imagine what went into the rest of the building. It's just it's insane. And, yes, some of that has trickled down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, isn't that fascinating, though, and you're bringing that experience back to Galveston, or to Galveston right from, from these Masons from Mexico.
Speaker 1:Well, that's how, that's how far you could trace it back. I mean you, can you get into some Uncomfortable conversations with some people? I'm open to it. Well, if you look at it, mexico's native Mexicans, which are the Mexicas, are really just two, three generations separated from Slaves from being slaves because when Mexico finally declared independence, the states divided up and.
Speaker 1:They were like you get this, you get that, you get that and the help went with them and what you call the help was really Incomendable, so that's what they call it. So these in commandos were people that were like, well, I'll give you the ranch, but you get five hands with you and those people don't get paid. They were this is why you get good food, because these guys would take the food that the owners didn't want and they would make stuff like menudo and pozole and all that, lots of spices, yeah.
Speaker 1:But there's a disconnect there and it might be, and it might be that history was erased or that maybe they told them. I Don't know, there's a lot of going, a lot of that going on now, but there's there's. There's an area where I wish these people wouldn't know, like why they're so good at it. I think there's a genetic memory installed.
Speaker 1:Yeah like you look at me, like oh yeah, you know I can do that and they just naturally I'm like I would have. I Could never see it. I'm sure they see some things that I do that way, but I have a lot of respect for these guys because you don't ever know. Maybe five, six, seven generations ago they were building the pyramids yeah, or I don't. Or maybe the four generations ago they helped build El Palacio de Villas Artes or something like that in Mexico City. You never know. And these guys are. These guys are phenomenal and I have a lot of respect for them.
Speaker 2:What's fascinating is how close Galveston is to Mexico geographically but how far away it seems in a lot of ways. You know there is. There is a connection, of course architecture, the politics over the past 200 years, like how I don't know it seems there still seems like there's a disconnect in some ways.
Speaker 1:Well, there, there, a lot of these stuff's are in parallel and this is how I found out they ran parallel when I was. Again, I'm back to Mexico City when I was in Mexico City. I'm going to the top of the back and all of a sudden I turn around. I was like that picture looks familiar and like why would a picture look familiar? And you know 700, 800 miles? That way Was a picture Bernardo de Galvez, oh yeah, hanging in the Castillo de Chapultepec, and I'm like, well, the island where I'm from is named after this guy. And now I'm seeing the original picture because you had a lot to do with Chapultepec.
Speaker 1:A lot to do with it, and I couldn't spit out the history like you do. You're the pro at that, but you you'll see a lot of similarities, because they're moving, they're shifting, so a lot of the restoration projects are very similar to here. So to me, to me, I think that it's all correlated together, I think yeah, spanish architecture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1:It is, it is very fast, dude.
Speaker 2:I love it. I could talk to you for hours.
Speaker 1:It's, it's hard. Unfortunately, this kind of stuff when I was growing up was deemed Nerdy or uncool or something like that, and there's so many people that are now Engaging in it that I love what you know. People like your age, people talk about a lot about the Millennials. Millennials are very Educated and they've got great parameters. They organize really well and you got guys like you that are actually pushing for preservation, digging stuff out, making Uncomfortable conversation a little more comfortable.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, that's the goal. Yeah, that is the goal. That's, that's progress, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of people don't like it, but it's part of it. Yeah if you don't, if you don't have progress, you don't have evolution, you're just gonna die.
Speaker 2:That's it. Yeah, no fall for die.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:That's it period, absolutely, but well one. Thank you so much for coming in today. This is 45 minutes already.
Speaker 1:Yes, but no, thank you. Great spaceman, every time that I talk to somebody, I'm like I know that guy you're, I'm certainly got you. I'm like fascinated about what you do and I'm always like telling my, my friends like you should really listen to some of the podcast because they're short and they're very Information. They have a lot of information in them.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, I really appreciate that because word of mouth is the way things Travel, especially in Galveston too.
Speaker 1:So I've seen you go from three likes on a post of 7,000 or something.
Speaker 2:It's, it's insane, it blows my mind. It really is.
Speaker 1:Congratulations You're doing a good job. I'm glad somebody took it upon themselves to do this.
Speaker 2:Thanks, man. It was a kind of a dream To kind of see what would happen. An experiment, because everything that I do, every, every post that we have, is an experiment, just to see if it'll work. See if it works, you know, what can we improve every time? To make it better, make it reach more people, at least make it more digestible and understandable.
Speaker 1:Okay. So question for you like what was it that one day you got up You're like I think I'm gonna do a post or a podcast or something.
Speaker 2:It was a culmination of a few different things.
Speaker 2:So, I was listening to podcasts every day probably two or three a day Because I was driving to and from Houston every day and even the jobs I had previously to commuting to and from Houston. I would be working at the port, on a dock, on a ship sometimes and just have headphones and listen to podcasts, depending on the work I was doing, and I would mainly listen to history podcasts. So when I moved back here in 2018, I was fascinated by the history. It always been, but I really got to dive into it, living in the downtown area and started reading all the historical markers and I think I had just hit the right age where I cared about history, because previous to that, I'm like, I'm working you know, it was just yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I just kind of started putting different pieces of context, different pieces of information together here in Galveston, like, oh wait, this is significant in New York, or this is significant to Texas history, or to why Texas was founded in the first place. You know things like that. And then I started a little running tour.
Speaker 2:And during the middle of the pandemic I was like I'm just gonna create an audio guide for my running tour as either like promo or just to create something. Honestly, I was just bored, had nothing else going on and when I started creating the audio it just started, just started growing. And then I was like why don't I interview the people who actually know what they're talking about, you know when?
Speaker 2:it comes to you know why am I, why should I be the one to sit up here and talk about how they preserve buildings, how you do restoration? Why would I do that? I have no information besides what I would read on Wikipedia, so it just made sense to sit down with people who really know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1:You've had a great success. I call it, whether it's financial or, but I mean there's a lot of people listening now and I think that this is what you're the caveat of, what the island needed.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks, I appreciate that, and what's cool about it is, even if I quit tomorrow, everything that we do and discuss is evergreen for the most part. For the most part, like a lot of the short little audio guys I do or the podcast it's all history based. So, you can listen to it 20 years from now and it's still relevant. So that's kind of the idea.
Speaker 1:So your business is a. You would consider it a COVID baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a COVID baby. Yeah, it's a COVID baby.
Speaker 1:A lot of people have COVID. I have two COVID babies.
Speaker 2:I got a real one and this.
Speaker 1:so yeah, you didn't lose any time, did you? No? No, we're talking to you, man. You didn't tell me to need me back over here.
Speaker 2:Let me know For sure man for sure, I think I need these brickworked on actually.
Speaker 1:I'll give you something a little more rough than this. This is amazing. Did you get it out of the building here in Gallister, or did you just?
Speaker 2:order it.
Speaker 1:No, the picture.
Speaker 2:This? No, it's. I just got on Amazon Really yeah, Because the sizes are odd.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. If you ever go to, I think that one of the ones that has the coolest bricks is the Clark Court building.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:If you ever get to go and sneak on the backside where the parking lot is at. Yeah man, I don't know if it was just scraps or if there was a fire. You know, these buildings, a lot of these buildings, caught on fire, oh yeah, and they just took whatever fell down and they put it back on the walls. There's just a lot of character on those walls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, that's something I didn't ask. You is like I'm sure you see how buildings they would build buildings out of bricks they just had laying around whether it was after a fire, after a hurricane, and they're like oh well, we got a 10,000 bricks there, we got 50,000 bricks there, we got 30,000 over here, we got enough to build this building. And I'm sure you see that you see it all you got red, you got brown, you got all these different mixes.
Speaker 1:I guess one of my not my punch lines is one of the things that I say is there's a and I used this before there's a thing called more in Mexico and I'm very proud of where I'm from, so that's why I always use that and more. It takes about 40 ingredients and when you marry it all together it's weird. It takes like chocolate and cacao and peanuts and like seven different peppers. When you marry it all together, you're like holy crap, it's a fusion. And you see some of these walls up. You're like man, those bricks were from Europe, these bricks are from Chicago, these bricks are from a fire, and they marry them all together and they work.
Speaker 1:And the same thing with the people on the island. You drive to the West and you have billionaires. You have people in this building that are billionaires, and then you have some guy that makes $13 an hour and we all get along. This should be, I think should be a case study. I agree For how the rest of the country should be ran, because, whether it's status, its name, whatever, this island seems to get along really well.
Speaker 2:I agree. I could not agree more man one.
Speaker 1:thank you so much, man. This is awesome Pleasure man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we're gonna have you back sometime soon, I hope so. Thanks, man, I appreciate it. So what do I do? Just walk away? I'll fade to black on that.