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What would Carmel-by-the-Sea be like without cute Comstock and Murphy houses? It all sort of happened by chance back in the formative years in Carmel but it continues to this day. We are trying to do our little bit to continue the tradition on a small scale as opportunities come up around town. It’s fun and rewarding to leave our touch on the Village by building high quality structures that we will continue to maintain.
We hope they will be around long after we’re gone. But, that’s sounds sort of depressing so let’s get you up to date on what we’ve been up to over the last year. And, we’d love to get others involved in our passion somehow.
A couple years ago, Ashlee Wright, Carmel’s great Librarian and Community Activities Director let us know she wanted to put a library “shrine” at the Park Branch Library. So, we volunteered to build one.
Working with Seaside finishing contractor Scott Coulter and Pacific Grove cabinet maker Don Whittaker, we designed and built a small house of sorts. We then installed it on the corner of Mission and 6th outside the library. It has became a popular way for residents to” Take a Book, Leave a Book”.
We had so much fun with this project we decided to look around town to find more opportunities.
Backflow Preventer Cover
Next, we saw the dilapidated cover over a large back-flow preventer outside Sunset Center’s business office on San Carlos near 9th Ave. We got to work and built a small Comstock-like house with access doors to allow maintenance. It’s a more complicated structure than it appears because we had to give access to all sides and the top to do special tests from time to time. We worked with Cleve Waters, the City’s Maintenance Manager to make sure we had all that taken into account.
Upon completing it, we worked with Cleve to install it with our contractor and master mind of this project Scott Coulter, who, sadly, passed away a short time after this project was completed. This house will hopefully be there, complete with a little bird that Scott painted on the front, for a long time.
They have now done their first test and the design worked perfectly.
Mini-Kiosks on Ocean Avenue
Next, we saw two mini-kiosks for magazines on Ocean Avenue that had become a little run down. Wesley Byrne was visiting Carmel for a week and wanted to work on a project to get some woodworking training from master cabinet maker Don Whittaker (Golden Hammer in Pacific Grove). They drove around town to look for opportunities and saw two run-down magazine racks on Ocean.
A week later Wes left town after building two replacements. Our sheet metal contractor Chris Dinner Sheet Metal volunteered to put copper caps on them after we had scraped and pegged them. Then, we stucco’d and stained them, delivered them to Public Works and the Public Works team installed one outside Lloyd’s Shoes and the other near Carrig’s near the corner of 9th and San Carlos.
They were immediately put to good use!
What’s Next?
We are eyeing modifications to the large newspaper/magazine rack outside the Main Library on Lincoln, or the one outside Village Corner restaurant and the one on San Carlos just north of Ocean.
However, it is likely that we will probably start adding or replacing smaller back flow preventer covers around town first. There are a lot of them and it will be fun to find interesting versions we can build. We might start with the one on the large median island on Rio at the southern town entrance which Mission Landscaping recently adopted through the Median Minder program. They will refreshing that one very soon.
Keep an eye out for it!
