10/15/2024
Twenty years ago or so, I got this British phone booth from a customer in lieu of payment for work. I had a feeling he was not going to pay his bill, and he had this phone booth sitting in his horse pasture. I offered to trade it for what he owed me. He agreed, and I had a crane pick it up and move it to its new home in front of our studio.
Soon after, the guy disappeared, stiffing some other contractors who worked on his project. At least I had the phone booth. I cleaned it up and painted it.. We bolted it to the concrete to prevent anyone from stealing it.
Finally, a few months ago, someone did try to steal it. They failed because it was bolted to the ground and because it weighs approximately 1,200 pounds. In the process of their attempted theft, they broke the wooden frame of the door, shattering it into pieces. Fortunately for me, they left the pieces.
Recently, we moved to Colorado. When we sold our studio property, I did not want to leave the phone booth behind, so I gathered together a few people to help me move it. A friend, Cliff, took the panels off so we only had to deal with the weight of the main frame. He had to cut most of the bolts on the panels to get them off. We loaded everything onto a heavy four-wheel cart and into a Pod to be shipped.
In its new home, I intended to convert it into a book vault. This was something I had thought about for a long time. But, we still had a huge task in getting it down the hill outside the new house, and inside to where I wanted to place it. We used a winch to lower it down the hill, and I had to ride on the side to keep it balanced. It wanted to roll down the hill away from the house, and if that happened, we would have had a huge problem.
By the time we got it down the hill, one of the cart’s wheels broke. Now, we could not roll it. So, we leveraged it along with a hand cart and rolled it on some deck spindles. This got it outside the door to the house. With the help of a couple of movers, we got it inside the house. But now we had another big task: we needed to stand it up. I estimate that the frame weighs at least 600 pounds. After a couple weeks of it sitting partially inside the room, I found a couple guys who are weight lifters, and they wanted to do the lifting. These two guys lifted the frame by themselves, and stood it in place.
Next, I needed to repair the door, repaint all the pieces, and come up with a plan to build shelves inside. I decided to make a wooden frame for the shelves, wedging it between the phone booth frame so that it would stay together partially from being attached to itself and partially from being wedged inside. I worked on the restoration and conversion for a solid week, and the plan paid off. The shelves are very sturdy, and I stacked my collection of NASA and other space-related books inside. This was something I had thought about for many years, and I’m really happy with the result. It seemed impossible at times, but I took it one step at a time.
If we ever move, the phone booth will have to stay with the house.
