Susie's Beauty Shop - Insider Tour

Join us on a tour of this building located in Appalachia, Virginia which most recently served as the location for Susie's Beauty Shop. We at Appalachian Rising Ventures recently acquired this building and are currently working tirelessly to prepare it for living as soon as possible.

[@MrsK4759]

This is so fascinating! I have never been to Virginia, although I have ancestors from there. It looks so beautiful. I am truly enjoying your channel. Please keep posting these wonderful videos

[@lauries6517]

Glass wax! I worked for a neighbor when I was 11 doing housework in the 1960's and she used glass wax on all of her mirrors and windows. It was a challenge to use. Just like car wax. Brings back memories.

[@AppalachianRisingVentures]

Interesting!

[@OnkelPHMagee]

A lot of the paneling reminds me of what my dad put up in my childhood bedroom. That would date it to 1974. I'd love to come and see in person sometime. (I get into the hills there every few years.) I wasn't raised in the area, but my ancestors were in Russell County 150+ years ago,

[@thoraldshib4393]

OMG ANOTHER ARV VIDEO! Haven't watched yet but already excited!

[@AppalachianRisingVentures]

Thank you for watching and supporting us!

[@Broadcastrix]

Thank you for sharing your mission to preserve these irreplaceable structures, and especially to find a use for them so they can survive. I have spent the last two hours looking at the Appalachia, Virginia, Sanborn maps from 1908, 1913, and 1922, from the Library of Congress website, and comparing them to current Google map images. Wow! Where the highway is now, that was a wild curve Main Street once had , with a curved row of several brick buildings, to include the post office, a bank, and hardware stores, not the mention the enormous "fireproof" stone, columned First National Bank across the street! A three-story, all-brick building labelled "drugs," appears to have been west of your beauty shop building location. Will anyone save the train depot? ☺

[@AppalachianRisingVentures]

Thank you for watching and supporting us!

[@cat3crazy]

Even without the water damage that is in the other buildings, I can see that there is quite a bit of work to be done in the beauty shop. I have no idea what the layout of the upstairs apartment is. With the extra walls added, and doorways blocked off, it seemed like a maze. I'm sure that you will get it all straightened out. I hope that you will be able to restore all the building. It will be a great place to visit when you are all finished. I've been interested in moving south for years. I don't have any plans yet.

[@AppalachianRisingVentures]

We hope someday you’ll come visit and love Appalachia VA!

[@Lantanana]

You give us a tour when u buy, but are you ever going to post tours showing your work on the buildings? Those are the videos I really am interested in.

[@AppalachianRisingVentures]

We just started taking possession of buildings in February of this year. So right now it is mostly demo and clean up work. This current building is in better shape though, so we have tenants moving into the upstairs apartment very soon, and we hope to have the commercial space ready in a few months as well. And maybe one other building occupied by a commercial tenant by the first of the year. However, many of these restoration will take us several years to complete. They are extensive, and in some cases, just in the nick of time before they became unsalvageable.

[@chrisconklin873]

Awesome

[@pollycurtiss5890]

Love what you are doing! One question though. Where will the people who will live in these apartments park? Seems to me that some of the old empty buildings are better off being torn down to create parking and downtown park/ recreational spaces. This would enhance and support those who live downtown.

[@AppalachianRisingVentures]

There is a park actually just to the left of our Dairy Building across the road, and some green spaces downtown already where older holdings were previously demolished. There is also a good sized municipal parking lot directly in the middle of town to the left of the Peake Building. However, we do plan to one day work on the back cliff side of these buildings on this side of Main to create outdoor spaces and possibly more parking. Currently, anybody living here can park on the street, but we hope someday that Main Street is busy enough that parking is a problem again. 🤞

[@JPW-qm6xe]

Love these old buildings! Was there any mining near this area?

[@AppalachianRisingVentures]

Yes, Appalachia is a railroad town that was surrounded by many coal camps. The underground mining goes every which direction. When I was a kid, less than a mile from downtown methane gas escaped from prior mines and filled an empty building and then exploded on Christmas Eve morning. We had just woke up for church, and I remember feeling our house shake. Amazingly, no one died.

[@JPW-qm6xe]

@@AppalachianRisingVentures You might want to have that ground water checked to see if any of it is coming from or redirected by previous old mining works. If it is, you can have the Abandoned Mine lands program see is it qualifies for abatement funds.

[@AppalachianRisingVentures]

@@JPW-qm6xewe are! They already tested it for chlorine, so we know it isn’t coming from broken public water sources. They are coming out to test it for minerals etc in a week or so. I lied on the mountain above these buildings, and I know above my house there was also a prior strip mine in addition to the underground mines, so it’s a possibility!

[@JPW-qm6xe]

@@AppalachianRisingVentures Good deal. I worked for the AML program here in Ky for 15 years.