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- Editor’s
Note:
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- This
column is a regular feature in the Wayback Times in which my
husband takes interesting people out to lunch … and sends
me the bill.
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- (It's
a tough job, but someone has to do it!)
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- Send
us an e-mail if you have someone in mind for one of Peter Neilly's
interviews over lunch.
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- Peter Neilly is Out
to Lunch
- Breaking bread with
interesting people
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- Out to Lunch!
with Peter Neilly
- Today's Out To Lunch guest is
Sven Kraumanis. Sven and his partner, Christine Jenkinson,
who own and operate Legacy Vintage Building Materials & Antiques
in Cobourg, Ontario. It's an amazing shop situated on the former
site of a Canadian Pacific Railway Express yard built in the
1890s. Its cavernous 10,000-square-foot post and beam structure
and the three acres of storage yard contain an incredible inventory
of historic artifacts and architectural building supplies. Sven
and Christine are building their 11,000-square-foot dream house
and while Christine is running things at the store, Sven has
agreed to take a break from the job site and meet me for lunch
at Kathleen's Kountry Diner just north of Cobourg
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- Sven & Christine
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- Peter: Thanks for meeting with me, Sven. Before you
arrived for lunch I was thinking back to several years ago when
we first met. Do you remember the circumstances?
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- Sven:Yes, I do. Christine and I were at your shop looking
for antiques and I asked you and Sandy if I could have a look
at the upper floor of your barn, and that's where we found "Lucky,”
the massive stuffed and mounted bull's head that was hanging
40 feet up in the rafters. He was missing one glass eye, only
had one horn and his matted bug-infested coat was covered in
50 years of barn debris. I just had to have him.
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- Peter: He was huge.We had to use ladders and ropes to
lower him down to the floor, and its head was so wide we had
to wedge it into the back of Christine's spotlessly clean Chevy
Yukon. I still remember that look she gave you. I know you had
a law practice before, so how does a lawyer become a builder,
renovator and vintage building material supplier?
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- Sven: I have always had a passion for building and preserving
the past and that passion eventually enabled me to figure out
how to do things. I moved away from Cobourg in 1964 and lived
and built in England, North Carolina, Missouri and Florida. I
built a house in Bermuda for Michael Douglas, the actor,
out of reclaimed materials and did the renovation of the Vancouver
house of a former Minister of Justice of Canada. I remember listening
to a speaker at a luncheon out there and hearing him say, "the
only way to own a small business in British Columbia is to open
a successful large one and wait." In 1996 I wound down my
law practice in the United States and resettled in Cobourg. I
started dismantling old barns to obtain materials to build a
home for myself and visited every significant salvage operation
from Hamilton to Kingston in search of building materials. What
I found was that the market for vintage building materials was
under-supplied. It was then that I decided that there was a need
for a business like Legacy. I secured and rezoned the Cobourg
C.P. Railway Yard and accumulated enough inventory to open on
July 15, 1998.
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- Peter: Your website indicates that you have more than
2,000 vintage doors in stock and you mentioned earlier that you
have more than 100 antique claw foot bathtubs. It must require
an incredible amount of work just to acquire and maintain the
level of inventory that Legacy has.
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- Sven: It does.We maintain a constant source of inventory
by dismantling old houses, buildings, barns and industrial facilities,
and we rely on a vast resource network of like-minded people
and businesses. Four years after opening, Christine and I teamed
up in a shared life as well as equal business partners and she
is great. Her fine eye for colour and style has increased Legacy's
appeal immensely. Christine has donated Legacy’s stock of
contemporary building supplies to various charities like Habitat
for Humanity and has restructured the company's focus on vintage
materials. She is half owner of the business, she organizes the
computerized inventory and manages the store and the virtual
warehouse website, which enables me to get out and do what I
do. I'm living my dream.
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- Peter: Legacy really is the ultimate recycler when it
comes to preserving the past. Is that part of the appeal of this
business?
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- Sven: It is a big part. Landfills are a costly and
wasteful alternative for reusable building materials. A demolished
house can add up to 92,000 pounds of waste to a landfill site.We
don't seem to have the same awareness in Canada that they have
in Europe about recycling and reusing building materials. But
I think things are slowing improving in this country. At Legacy
we adopt the view that we don't inherit our environment from
our ancestors, but rather borrow it from our children.
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- Peter: Your company is a well know source for movie, television
and stage designers. How does that work?
Sven: Legacy has sold or rented items to create sets for
many movies like Chicago, Godsend, Cinderella Man, The Hulk,
Men with Brooms and television series like Degrassi the Next
Generation and Restaurant Makeovers. We have actually sold a
couple of airplanes and some boats, but the effort now is focused
mainly on architectural antiques and to that end we do a lot
of buying in Europe and Eastern Europe where we have picked up
some amazing wrought iron pieces. The house we are building now
is from reclaimed materials and buildings we dismantled. The
finials and terracotta trims we bought in Scotland and England
and there are four big marble columns that we got from the Bank
of Montreal building in Toronto.We have had those for ten years.
They were not hot sellers at 5,500 pounds in weight apiece, but
they will be put to good use. I would much rather build with
the old stuff and use gravity and levers to accomplish what I
need.
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- Peter: What is your involvement with Habitat for Humanity?
Sven: I was a director for a couple of years. They are a
great organization that fill a huge void in our industry. They
reuse a lot of post war pieces in building homes. Sometimes a
100-year-old home that we are dismantling will have a nice, almost
new, bathroom fixture or a fiberglass tub enclosure that can
be put to great use by them. Once again, instead of something
getting sent to a landfill, it gets put to good use. I really
am interested in promoting the architectural salvage industry
in this country. Sam at The Door Store in Toronto is probably
the Grand- pappy of the industry, but there are probably only
five companies doing this in Ontario. In England, there must
be more than 100 architectural salvage companies and they deal
in everything old including bricks and cobblestones.We stopped
at a place in England that must have had 2,000 fireplace mantels.
People in Canada need a shakeup.We need to start saving our history
and heritage like they do in Europe and even the United States
now. Someday, there won't be any antiques left in Canada if we
don't get serious.
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- Peter: You have a sign in your store that answers "Frequently
Asked Questions" and I think that your answer to No. 6,
"Are Your Prices Firm?” was very well put. I think
a lot of antique dealers would like to hang it in their stores.
Sven: Yes, the answer
to No. 6 is; “ Yes, our prices are based on condition and
scarcity.We have personally travelled, sought, negotiated, financed,
purchased, packed, transported, unpacked, inventoried, cleaned,
repaired, priced, displayed and marketed these goods for your
convenience.” Quality is remembered long after price is
forgotten.
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- Peter: We have a sign in our shop that states "Discounts
given to civil war veterans only, must be accompanied by both
parents.” I think your sign sums it up much better. Thanks
for meeting with me Sven, and good luck to you and Christine
on your old/new home.
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- Note: In addition to being a very educational glimpse
at the craftsmanship of the past, a visit to Legacy might also
result in a good ghost story. Ask Doug, one of the capable and
helpful staff at Legacy, about the unexplained noises and slamming
of doors that occur at random within the walls of this historic,
and possibly haunted, circa 1890 Canadian Pacific Railway building.
It's scarrrrry stuff.
Out to Lunch Archives:
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