Green room is a theater term for a space where actors meet before and after performances. Located in the basement of the Calumet Theatre, the green room is centrally located between the dressing rooms, which have also been completely refurbished.

Copper Harbor residents and theater patrons Jeff and Kathy Ihde, owners of Dragonfly Dream Designs, worked on restoring the space for more than a month.

Kathy Ihde said the Green Room project actually began in December, the night the Calumet High School Band conducted its Christmas concert at the theater, when a band member expressed a desire to see the basement of the theater, but was afraid to go down the steps by herself. Kathy had not been there before either, so the two went downstairs together.

“We went down together and went through a door,” Kathy said. “And I just thought, ‘Are you (kidding) me?’ I didn’t say that out loud, but that’s what my brain said.”

Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette The green room and dressing room areas of the Calumet Theatre, seldom viewed by the public, received extensive cleaning, painting and refurbishing in January, thanks to two dedicated volunteers, Kathy and Jeff Ihde of Copper Harbor.

Kathy described it as gloomy, scary and icky.

“I thought, this is a 100-year-old theater and this needs to be brought back to its former self,” she said.

In early January, she and her husband, Jeff, approached Theater Director of Operations Nathan Jones to ask for permission to paint and “make it pretty down there.”

While the cleaning and painting were going on, Mary Jean Hyslop, with the Vertin Gallery, in Calumet, brought in floor coverings and gold furniture.

“We worked on that for just over a month,” said Kathy.

Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette The green room and dressing room areas of the Calumet Theatre, seldom viewed by the public, received extensive cleaning, painting and refurbishing in January, thanks to two dedicated volunteers, Kathy and Jeff Ihde of Copper Harbor.

In addition to painting the walls and ceilings, and installing a new waterproof epoxy floor sealant, fixtures were also restored. Jeff removed the light fixtures, which had a modern-looking, bright brass finish, about which Kathy commented, “This isn’t the 1980s anymore.”

They received a new finish of antique brass, as did the outlet and switch plates on the walls. Jeff also located wire cages to fit over the light bulbs, bringing the fixtures above the dressing table mirrors back to their original appearances. Metal copper trim was also applied over the frames of the mirrors.

There are, of course, modern fixtures in the dressing room, including basins with modern faucets and modern counters that serve as the dressing tables, but the cleaning and painting of all the rooms, including the bathrooms and shower areas, have returned a 1920s flavor to the spaces.

“Kathy and Jeff spent quite a few hours putting this together,” said Theatre Board President Dan Jamison, and they did a beautiful job. They painted the floor and sealed it, so we can have rugs again, so that they don’t turn into petri dishes, and got rid of all the junk.”

They drove all the way from Copper Harbor to Calumet to do this stuff in the dead of winter, during all the snow and stuff that we finally got, said Jamison, and they did the same thing when they were setting up for Christmas.

The upgrades to the dressing room area beneath the stage were not the only improvements made in the basement. Last fall, the lower level of the building was overcome with the smell of sewage.

In searching for the source, Jones found multiple issues with the sewage grinder and multiple leaks in the lid of the lift station, along with breaks in the cast iron pipes, which are original to the 1900 construction of the building.

In instances where a building is at a lower elevation than the sewer main, a pump that forces the wastewater up the sewer main is required. A sewage grinder works like a garbage disposal; it grinds up wastewater from the toilet, shower and washing machine and pumps it into the public sewer system.

“We had to get those fixed,” Jones said. “Once we took care of those, that took care of our sewage problem.”

The sprinkler and fire alarm systems, which were found to be nonfunctional, were also repaired.