I’m 40 now. The thought of reaching that age, that number, wasn’t nearly as daunting as considering what I should do to commemorate it. A friend of mine suggested a road trip to pick up some cars from a junkyard in North Dakota. Interesting, for sure, and certainly up my alley. But such adventures are time-consuming to the extreme, and unpredictable to boot. (That’s part of the fun.) My wife and I considered going back to Europe for vacation, but there’s always the chance we’d accidentally buy a project house in Bosnia and have to raise our son, young Gusti, there. We finally landed on the obvious: Why not throw a shindig at our historic-foundry-turned-car-commune? If nothing else, it would be a solid test of the place as an event space.
The idea did make me a little nervous. Would all that foot traffic stir up dormant clouds of dust? There haven’t been more than a dozen people in here at a time in probably as many years as I’ve been alive. A lot of my friends also have kids, and now that I’m thinking about these things, toxins and sharp objects nothing to brush off. The foundry is not child-proof, nor is it remotely child-proofable. I could try, though.
Thinking about it more, it would be a good excuse to do some much-needed cleanup and organization. My wife and I agreed: We were ready.
Some major items of concern stuck out… literally. Nails, glass, that sort of thing. This is not an exhaustive list of concerns, just the ones that gave me a panic attack on first thought:
We got started with the most important stuff.
About a month prior, I invited some guys from work over to hang out in the foundry. I did not expect that six people could so effectively stress-test the capacity of our plumbing system in one evening. After three successive number ones, the toilet had lost its ability to fill itself after flushing. So, the next couple of weeks we had a bright red five-gallon Harbor Freight bucket full of water sitting next to the toilets. I should also add that the stall walls were rotten at the bottom, the floors were absolutely disgusting, and washing one’s hands in such a sink didn’t seem much more sanitary than doing so in the bucket. After all, most mechanics are primarily concerned with washing their hands before going to the bathroom.
There was only so much of this bathroom project I was willing to do myself, and that scope ended at scrubbing the toilets. I called my trusty handyman friend, Juan, and gave him the open-ended task of turning the bathrooms into something he’d allow his family to use without having to mentally prepare them beforehand. This would not be a full-scale renovation—just repairing holes that had been punched in drywall, replacing baseboards, and getting the water to properly flow again.
Naturally, the foundry members and I cooked up plenty of dumb ideas for a more, uh, visually impressive bathroom renovation. Miami Vice 1980s theme? Old car ads plastered with shellac on the walls? Replicate the black-and-white tiled bathroom at Fat Daddy’s in Raleigh? (Triangle O.G.s will know.)
Rightly ignoring all of us, Juan did a bang-up job and got the stalls nice enough for even the most prudish males and females in my friend circle. And the plumbing issues? Likely the result of water rusting the pipes when services had been shut off long ago, bringing flakes of rust into various junctions and valves when turned back on. The grossest of the jobs was now complete!
I decided that the nexus of the party area would take place in my heavily windowed white room, because it could at least look clean. With a bay door on either end—one leading from the driveway to the basketball court/wash bay and a smaller bay door going to the main shop—it seemed perfect for managing the flow of revelers. If I could get this place cleaned out and looking halfway sanitary, it might help keep people out of the more dangerous and dirty areas of the complex. I mean, there is a waiver we make everyone sign, but still.
The floor in this room was hydrophobic, or water repellent. When you spilled a cup of Bojangles tea on the ground, it would bead up like mercury on glass. This made for an amusing and low-budget nonstick flooring option, but it was also an indication we needed to clean it as best as possible. Pressure washing was the only angle. It was a hot weekend, and the thought of standing under misted water for tens of hours sounded even better than the resulting clean concrete, so I bit off the job myself.
First order of business: relocate the 10 or so vehicles sitting on that side of the shop. I used it as an excuse to move the Lark and the Hawk over to the other side to finish the brake job and fuel tank clean-out, respectively.
One of my friends in Statesville is a local Husqvarna sales rep. He’s always looking out for our needs and occasionally drops off a backpack blower or a ninja death wheel for clearing brush. After explaining how our last round of pressure washing went (multiple mechanical failures and a days-long exercise), he dropped off an orange beast of a rinsing machine. This space contains many reminders that it was once operated as a paint and body shop, but the sole positive artifact of that time is a hot water spigot. I hooked up to the pressure washer, sprayed the floors and walls with some kind of purple goo, and went to town.
Heavy things that rolled around the foundry for damn near a century left marks and uneven surfaces. As I was pressure washing, I had to monitor where the water was running to find the continental divide in the room. This helped me decide which door to shuttle the slurry out of. After finishing the floors and lower walls in an iterative triple wash, I broke out one of the man lifts and started working on the upper sections of the walls from above, including the windows.
That’s when it all went to hell.
Stockpiles of factory ash had never been evacuated atop the beams. Its patience was finally revealed. A river of black ran down the shop walls, but not before a plume of antique foundry dust coated everything else we’d already cleaned. Acknowledging that this had to stop somewhere, I rinsed everything off best I could, gave up, and declared victory.
The next task—or many tasks—involved beverages. Remember, this is the type of place where people grab a dirty garage beer out of a dirty mini fridge with dirty hands and blow off the top of the can with compressed air. A select few of my friends, it occurred to me, may expect to imbibe out of clean cups.
When they talk about their friends in low places, it’s me. And the foundry is about as low as it gets.
We partially solved the drink storage problem by cleaning off several workbenches and rolling tables. Desire for further expansion of the party space had me constructing a corner bar out of some donated butcher block. Our measly little fridge was not going to cut it, so my wife called up my good friend Joe at Statesville’s Red Buffalo Brewery. Being a reliable and appropriately eccentric friend, Joe has a Daihatsu HiJet fire truck that’s been converted to carry and pour cold beer. Talk about a slam dunk for a festival!
With clean floors on which to park, Joe dropped off the fire truck a few days early so that we could run the necessary cords and get the placement just right. We selected an IPA and a seltzer.
I was informed by some of our wiser members that not everyone likes beer. Fascinating! I hosed out a few galvanized tubs—which conveniently already had drain holes rusted into the bottom of them—and filled them with ice. Then I packed ’em full of “water” and “soft drinks.” Could this get any easier?
With clean floors, walls, and surfaces, I could imagine people eating food here without having silica sand embedded in their molars. For the grub, I needed something easy that would also freeze well if nobody came. Admittedly, our invitation process was flawed and strictly involved my wife and I spamming our phone contacts lists with an invite poster. Tracking RSVPs? Zero. Could we expect 100 people or four? What do I look like, a party planner? Fortunately, my wife and family pitched in big time to cover for my shortcomings.
I can make Eastern North Carolina barbecue, and Food Lion had pork butts on sale. Furthermore, pulled pork can be turned into a variety of things: barbecue sundaes, enchiladas, tacos, salads. The stuff could last for months if it had to. My buddy Jon and I hashed out a plan in which he would bring over a smoker and we’d prepare these three butts in various delicious ways.
To celebrate my forty years of life so far, we decided it would also be a good thing to go catch catfish the morning of the party and see what we could clean and fry up on site. Just like back in the day. While the meat was smoking and my dad was periodically dealing with a jammed pellet hopper, we were out landing pretty decent-sized catfish. Rounding out the food package was a birthday present from my wife: a brand-new hardware store-style popcorn machine with fresh kernels for all to enjoy.
In the weeks prior, I had both invited the foundry gremlins renters and asked them to clean their areas up. Which they had mostly done. In the last-minute thrash, we threw all the remaining junk in the truck bed of poor disabled Fuggles and moved several cars around the property to free up some space. While the meat was smoking, a select few cars were allowed to stay in the white room for their photogenic properties. The Citroën army was positioned in a way to mitigate people climbing on my storage rack and pulling it over. The Moskvich was proudly displayed next to my office chair, and the shiny red Renault GTA we parked against the now sparkling white wall. I even washed the piano. It was quite a sight, if I do say so myself.
I ended up being fashionably late to my own party, with the fishing taking a little bit longer than I expected. When I rolled up 15 minutes after the scheduled time, there were already at least 10 people there. More people—and their beautiful cars—kept showing up until the place started looking like a real event. An Alfa GT showed up on a trailer, a Tesla-powered Porsche 930 silently rolled up, a few GR Corollas, and even my long-awaited Bolens tractor was returned.
The party was centered around the basketball court and the white room—where all the frying fish, smoking meat, the popping popcorn was happening. With my friends and family gathered in my new special place, this was a 40th to remember. It was also a 40th to spark new ideas. Who says we need a birthday to gather here for a parking lot full of vintage cars, pork butts, and beer?
Food for thought.
Fantastic job and jealousy-inducing party, Matthew. The foundry has indeed become more than just a dirty ol’ place to wrench in, store some junk, and crack a few cold ones with your buddies. I know I’m not the only reader out here who is wishing they could run across someplace similar that could be such a great multi-purpose venue.
Regarding the bathroom “refreshes”, allow me to relate what I did in my shop office “john”. My wife’s old restaurant had barnwood walls in the dining area – true old stuff that was 1″ thick and up to 18″ wide. We salvaged as much as we could when the building was demo’d, and I put it up on the walls of my shop restroom. I created a “stall” that is similar to the one in your photos, separated from the stainless-steel wash-up sink (which was also rescued from the restaurant kitchen). I covered the toilet with a removable barnwood “single-holer” and voila, we had what we call the “In-house Outhouse”. A few rusty old license plates and such hung on the walls, and when you close yourself in that stall, you’d swear you had walked out of a 1850s farmhouse with a lantern to get to the privy at dark-thirty. (I ever put the sliver moon cutout on the stall door.)
With the creativity evident from yourself and gremlin crew, I’m betting you will make those less-than-inviting areas of your shop into places where future entertaining will ensure that you’ll be turning people away!
Oh, yeah, and silly me: Happy 40th Birthday, sir!