This Old House

One of the coolest things about Prodigy Pixel (and we are quite cool) is our office. We have the privilege to work out of a restored Victorian house, which will be celebrating its 103rd birthday this December. After a few close-quarters offices around Springfield, Aaron and Jason found this gem complete with old-lady-pink carpet and lace curtains (its previous business was a senior citizen hair salon) and immediately began renovations. With four employees at the time, everyone crammed into a small back room for several months while the house was under construction. The biggest challenges were removing the carpet and refinishing the original hardwood floors and trim, stripping miles of wallpaper and repainting, renovating both bathrooms and knocking out a wall or two., and hard-wiring RJ45 Ethernet throughout (wifi just isn’t good enough for us). After several years, the house is coming along beautifully, and we’ll be moving our focus to the exterior soon to make more improvements – putting up new siding and adding some landscaping.

But of course, the house still has it’s quarks. The doorways and floors are uneven, it gets a little drafty with Jason’s office always being about 100 degrees warmer than the rest of the house, and the front door has an eerie way opening on its own throughout the day.

And we’re going Extreme Home Makeover on you here with some more before and after shots (pardon the poor cell phone photos):

To add to the cool factor, our house was actually listed as an historic site in Springfield, Missouri by the Springfield Historical Sites Board in 1983, and is named the Annie Abbott House. The house was originally built by James Abbott, a well-known developer of the area, and even served as Springfield’s mayor for a short time. The house just east of ours was also built by Abbott, and was his family’s home. Our house was used as a general store and run by the Abbott family. After James’ death, his daughter Annie moved into our house and remained here until her death.

If you’re a history buff, below are some photos of the historic paraphernalia we like to keep around (again, apologies for the fuzzy photos) including the Springfield Historical Sites Board plaque and the original abstract title of the land circa 1837, when it was purchased for roughly the same price as an iPhone 4 (with contract, of course). My, how times have changed.