Student paints house with Western pride

Edward Waller
Western Herald

When Barclay Ford, a junior majoring in fashion at Western Michigan University, came to his landlord Greg Hoover to ask him if he could paint the house he rents at 1216 W. Michigan, Hoover quickly agreed, thinking he was going to be painting the inside.

Ford did paint the inside, but most of the time and the paint was used on the outside of the house.  He painted the front porch of the house with school colors: brown, black and yellow and slogans like, “Go Broncos,” earning the house the name of “The Western House.”

“The house wasn’t in that great of shape, the whole porch was rotted and falling down, the wood was bare,” Ford said.

He proceeded to go talk to Hoover to see if it was OK if he painted the house.

“I told him, I said, ‘I’m going to make this house better than you have ever seen it and he saidOK,’” Ford said. “I asked him if he would pay for the paint to spruce up the house and he said ‘Oh yeah, sure,’ little did he know that I was going to do the whole outside.”

“When I handed him the bill he was a little ticked off. He told me I have to curb my enthusiasm a bit and I told him ‘OK I’ll do that,’” said Ford laughing.  “I worked on it for no more than five days; but five days consecutively for 11 hours a day. So it was 55 hours just in those five days.”

Ford spent hours painting while taking summer classes. It took five gallons of primer, one gallon of black paint, three gallons of brown paint and one gallon of yellow paint.  It cost about $200 dollars for the first initial payment from Hoover and Ford himself threw in an addition $90 dollars.

Ford has three other roommates, Cory Hamlin, Kevin Burelson and Joe David, who were in their home towns when Ford decided he wanted to paint the house. Ford painted the house a week before school started.

“When they came back their minds were blown, they were astonished, I had the vision in my mind but no one knew it but myself,” Ford said.

Even though his roommates liked it, when Hoover found out what Ford had really painted he was a little skeptical about the whole thing.

“He wasn’t prepared for the whole outside, but after I got going he wasn’t going to stop me,” said Ford.
Hoover thought the idea to paint was a great idea when Ford first approached him about it.

“At first I thought ‘man, that’s great, he wants to dress the house up a bit’ and I was all for it,” Hoover said, “Then when he got started it was like ‘hmm, it was more of an undertaking than I anticipated him doing.’”

“I thought he was strictly inside and then I came over and saw him on the outside, but I’ll tell you, the product is awesome,” Hoover said.

When asked about Ford, Hoover said. “He has real good spirit and he’s a good guy. If I had a sales position open, I’d hire him in a minute.”

Hoover, who is a WMU alumnus himself, graduated in the class of ’89 and has lived in the neighborhood since 1993.  He thinks the house shows a lot of school spirit and is the most unique house in the neighborhood.

In the end, Hoover and the house mates weren’t the only people really impressed with Ford and the house.
Ford said that strangers and even other students have approached him to tell him they really enjoy the look of the house in the neighborhood.

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Posted by HeraldAdmin on Sep 30 2008. Filed under Local, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
Web Manager: I'm a Communication Student at WMU, a SCUBA Diver, Boater, Ordained Minister, Notary Public, Web Designer, Film Maker, DJ, and of course a Journalist. Born and raised in Port Huron, MI and a graduate of SC4. http://www.codykimball.com