On Monday, three generations of flooring installers ended up on hand — and two of them on their knees — at the Historic Duval-Metz Dwelling in Floral Metropolis.
Paul Clemens, 92, who started off a flooring organization in 1976 in Homosassa, his son, Chris, and Chris’ son, Dave, had come to install wooden flooring in the kitchen of the historic household that was developed by ex-Accomplice soldier John Paul Formy-Duval about 1866.
Chris Clemens and organization partner Joe Bell opened Area Flooring in Homosassa in 2005 Dave works with them, and Paul is retired.
“What we’re performing nowadays is installing engineered hardwood flooring … that is produced to glance like an old, aged, ground, like it arrived off an previous fence,” Chris Clemens mentioned.
Floor Flooring donated all the supplies and their labor for the undertaking.
The Duval-Metz Household, which sits back again on the house at the corner of Orange Avenue and Aged Floral Town Road in Floral City, was purchased in 2012 by the Duval Preservation Belief, developed by H. D. Bassett, a Formy-Duval descendant.
Considering the fact that then, the goal has been to restore the house as an adjunct to the nearby heritage museum. The kitchen, at one particular time a independent building, was moved and joined to the most important home, probably right after energy came to Floral City in 1913.
Restoration of the kitchen area is also just one of the last assignments to be concluded.
As Chris, Dave and their crew nailed the wood flooring planks in area, Paul Clemens talked to the Chronicle about his 50-plus many years in flooring, starting in Orlando where by he grew up.
“I started in 1945 when I was still in large school,” Clemens claimed. “I worked portion-time following school. Back then I made 25 cents an hour, which was superior funds in people days. … Then I acquired a increase to 50 cents, and sooner or later I was building $1.30 an hour.”
Soon after a stint in the Air Power through the Korean War, Clemens and a spouse opened Stoll & Clemens Flooring in Orlando their organization put in the flooring in the authentic Disney Parks, Sea Earth and Circus Globe points of interest.
In 1976, Clemens and his late spouse moved to Citrus County and opened Clemens Flooring, across from Howard’s Flea Current market in Homosassa.
Later, son Chris joined him.
“At that time, they utilized to offer 5-acre tracts of land for $1,500 — $20 down and $20 a thirty day period,” Clemens claimed. “I bought five acres and then yet another five acres subsequent to it on Palmer Road, off Cardinal Lane.”
He claimed his son experienced commenced working with him “when he was just belt-large,” and Chris claimed the exact same thing about his son.
Chris Clemens claimed he figured out from his father that get the job done arrived very first, prior to taking a lunch split, and that integrity is far more critical than earnings.
Dave explained his grandpa taught him, “Ten excellent positions will obtain you a single, and one terrible job will lose you 10 — word of mouth is a large deal.”
Clemens semi-retired in 1990 when he acquired some house in Bat Cave, North Carolina, not significantly from Asheville.
“I say semi-retire simply because when I got there, men and women retained inquiring me to do their floors,” he claimed, including that it is been possibly much more than 15 decades that he’s set up flooring, but he hasn’t neglected how to do it, and he even now has his resources.
On Monday, with the do the job heading on in the kitchen area, a several Floral Metropolis inhabitants who are concerned in the heritage and preservation of Floral Metropolis gathered on the Duval-Metz Dwelling porch.
“This is just my belief, but this is a person of the most significant tasks that this minor local community has been concerned in,” Frank Peters said. “We have other historic structures, but this is the oldest household structure in the county, and it goes back to the Civil War.”
Chris Clemens said that is what drew him to want to do this.
“Here we are, three generations in this organization doing work on the oldest dwelling in Citrus County,” he said, “what far better organization to do this?”