Transforming Elko, Nevada: Watch This Huge Mural Come to Life!

We had just finished our mural in Battle Mountain, Nevada, and then we were off to Elko, Nevada for our next project. Now this mural will probably go down in history as our largest mural ever, because if you can believe it, this wall is just half of it. Now when we got to Elko, we arrived to a unique situation. Part of this mural had already been completed. The previous fall, we had passed through Elko on our way to California. It was then that we painted this one panel at the Igloo Rec Center. One panel is all we could finish then, as winter was setting in fast. So we had planned to return in summer 2021 to complete the entire exterior. The good thing was that inside the Igloo, temperature is controlled, so we were also able to paint this mural in the fall as well. A great teamwork effort with the Nevada Gold Mines crew. But wait, back up. What's the Igloo Rec Center? Glad you asked. The Igloo Rec Center is a cornerstone of the community of Elko, Nevada. It's an entirely volunteer-run community space, a nonprofit relying entirely on the active participation of community members in everything it does. For years and years, the exterior of the Igloo has been in need of a big pick-me-up, and that's where we came in in tandem with Nevada Gold Mines. This is Matt. He's the president and all-around wearer of many hats for the Igloo. It's great when you first meet someone and immediately feel at ease, like you've been friends for a while. Everyone we met in Elko was just like that. Jose and Luis spent a couple days punching out the design for the Igloo. But before paint hit the wall, we got to experience a couple treaks. In the late 1800s, many immigrants from the Basque region of Spain migrated to Elko County to form the backbone of a thriving livestock industry in the region. The county holds such strong ties to its Basque roots that tributes to these roots can be seen and felt all over town. Like here at the Star Hotel, founded in 1910 to provide lodging and familiar Basque dishes to the newcomers from the old country. To this day, the hotel is owned by Basques who still serve up traditional Basque favorites. And those roots can be seen here at the annual National Basque Festival. And we were lucky enough to be there. So we'll be back with another exhibition. So varied, and diverse history. Much more than many think. It is the true melting pot of the world. Each new influence is adding a new flair to the fabric. and then we got to celebrate Independence Day in traditional fashion. This brought me right back to my childhood celebrating the 4th of July at my county fairgrounds. And then being the 4th of July weekend, we took a day of rest to explore the town. And by explore, I mean we went to go look at all the murals. So now it was time to finish that design and go get some primer. Lots of it. We got a big wall to paint, so it's time to get some primer. Let's go get some rollers. All right, so it's time to go and prime that wall. I feel so spoiled being able to use this tool because we have painted huge murals using ladders and scaffolding, which is not fun. But with this one, it makes everything a breeze. Day one of priming. We're going to see how much of this we can get done today. Wish us luck. Now this is when we tell you about the wall. The wall. This is one side of the Igloo Rec Center. It has a height of about 25 feet and a length of about 180 feet. Each of those panel sections is about 20 feet long. We weren't painting the entire wall. These sections here would later be covered with panels depicting different sports in action. But we did the math. Both walls combined, we would be covering about a total of 5,500 square feet of wall with paint. So we are hand washing down the metal doors. And to do that, we are using old Jose shirts. As we mentioned before, this isn't the entire mural. There's more. A lot more. But we'll keep you in suspense a little bit longer on that one. What we can tell you is that all in all, this was going to be a heck of a job. With the wall primed, it was now time to transfer the design. Usually a projector is our best friend for transferring the design. But on this side of the Igloo, the design was so geometric and so symmetrical in its geometry that truly the only way to get it precise was a good old chalk line and math. So the end of the design transfer day. And I just wanted to give you a little behind-the-scenes, behind-the-scenes of bus in mural mode. This is what it looks like. Definitely not like HGTV mode like when you guys see it on bus tours on YouTube and all that. Yeah, it's nine o'clock and I'm gonna put the house back, crank some tunes, put it back together, do the dishes. And then when that's done, be able to settle in and we'll be able to work on some computer work. So wish me luck. And now, the best moment. In the meantime, the cavalry had arrived. The first crew of volunteers, the first of many, came to help prime the second wall. Alright, so every time I paint a mural, it's always with brushes and latex paint. But on this project, we're going to use a little bit of spray paint. I'm excited to go out there and see what's up. Hi. Hi, buddy. Hey, guys. Oh, this one. Oh, that one's curious though. As we kept following the GPS, the road kept getting less and less Prius friendly. But by that point, we were in it. And our destination was right over the hill. We just had to get up it and over it. This location, it better be worth it. It was worth it. And then we explored this fascinating site that we found ourselves in. Inside of the building. So it's a structure. But then you have all this great all around it. The first settlers came in 1910, followed by many others until 1935. Many who lived here aspired to become teachers, lawyers, civic leaders, church leaders, and best of all, reared great families and homes where love and happiness filled their lives. So this was a whole town. And it was like a big town. Yeah. Look at that. Look at the buildings. I'm wildly in love with this town. I'm intrigued now. So I have a question for you guys watching this video. What do you think this structure used to be? The road out is a real road. Wells is the closest town to the site where we're shooting. We actually learned where the place is. It's an old ghost town used to be called Metropolis. And this is the closest town to it. It turns out that the town died because there was no water. Literally that of dirt. And it looks like Wells has some cool buildings too. Historic front street, they say. This is main street, Wells. I think we just gravitate towards this corner. To me, it's more interesting. This is in a big city for cool and all that. The culture and everything that happens in cities. There's always something going on. But you find unique things in small towns like here, for example, you see all this old cars. And it's just interesting to see small town America. Yeah. And I think that that idea of no culture in small towns is a silly idea. Wherever there are human beings, there's culture, you know? So I have a soft place in my heart for a classic American diner. And so we're both hungry and this is what we were looking for and we found it. They have like a whole menu section for biscuits and gravy. We just got our food and there is no way that Cora is gonna finish all of this. What? There's no way you're gonna finish all of that. Definitely not. But I'll have leftovers. That's a meal for three days for you. Yeah. So I have something to say about this. Are you ready? Every time I live abroad, there are a couple dishes that I really, really miss and this is one of them. What's it called? Biscuits. All right, my job is done here. Let's see how Cora's doing. That's not looking very good. How many biscuits did you order? Four. How many do you eat? Think again? Okay, one and three quarters. Why? That was good. Good meal. Then we were back to priming the wall and we are finally ready to show you the wall. This is the other side of the igloo mural, the front wall. It has a height of about 25 feet and a length of approximately 140 feet. As mentioned before, when we combined both walls, we determined we had about 5,500 square feet of wall to cover in paint. All right, so it's now time to transfer the design on this wall because in about two or three hours, we're going to have about 10 or 12 volunteers. So they got to have the lines ready so people can start putting color on this wall. And just like that, color. Just like in Battle Mountain, this mural was a gift from Nevada Gold Mines to the community of Elko County. It felt really special to be part of this overhaul of the igloo's exterior because we knew how important of a community space it is and we knew how long in the making this overhaul was. And just like in Battle Mountain, NGM not only sponsored the mural but played a key part in bringing it to life. Every day after the volunteer crew left, we would keep on working even sometimes into the night. We had a time crunch as a visit from some very special people was just around the corner, so we pushed forward. We actually enjoyed working by night sometimes. It was so much cooler than during the day. It was Nevada in mid-July, so the days were hot. Many hands make light work. A steady stream of volunteers kept us moving forward. And it was moving fast. It was just such a big wall that there was no way around it taking some good time. After having so many volunteers, you have a lot of dirty brushes. So this is a part of the mural that we don't always show you. Now it's time for me to go and clean up all these brushes. So this right here is the not-so-much-fun part of painting a mural, especially when you have a lot of volunteers and you have a lot of things to get them to do and you got to keep them going. You end up with a lot of dirty brushes that they need to be cleaned right away, otherwise they'll get ruined. So I'm going to clean all these brushes because tomorrow we're going to have another big group of volunteers. Brushes are clean. For a lot of these brushes, this is going to be their last mural. Some of them have painted quite a few. So Jose is going to give me a lift, not intended, up to the roof. So I'm going to go up there and for that I have my whole little paint station. I've got a power station, my phone, paint, brushes, everything I need to create my little space up there. It's just such a pretty color. What's it called? Lollipop. So naturally I like it because I have a sweet tooth. Now in the midst of all that painting, we had the opportunity for another cultural event. One that we actually share in common, even though we grew up in completely different parts of the world. That was a good rodeo. So this is something kind of interesting that we do share in common. We come from very different places, but Wisconsin, Nicaragua, we both grew up seeing rodeos. Plus you grew up watching rodeos. I grew up riding a horse. Close enough. There's something so meditative about painting, about putting on your headphones, listening to music or a podcast, just getting lost in it. It's therapeutic and we hear the same sentiment over and over from volunteers who come to paint. The days went on like this, crew after crew of volunteers and the sections of color continued to fill in. The community really rallied on this one. We had everyone out there. Kids, teenagers, adults, Nevada Goldmine employees and interns, just folks from all across the community. There's nothing like the moment it all starts to come together. All the colors start to pop, the lines are crisp. Then came a tricky part, projecting the second part of the design. We have some waves that are going to go through the shapes in the entire front of the building. It's kind of hard to get them perfectly, like I have it in the computer. We tried projecting, but we had to place a projector so far so the lines are not very defined when it was time to trace it. What we had to do was just do the best we could with the lines, with the projection, and those lines will serve just as a guide. Now I had to make those lines smoother and I decided to do it with this masking tape and I can be playing around with it. Cora is in the back over there telling me if I should go up or higher to keep those waves moving through the shapes really smoothly. Now this gets tricky here, so I need you to... Is that good? Yeah. I think I just curved it too much here. Okay, now higher. There you go. You see this line? Now it curves down. Don't think I'm gonna stop here. This one's not because this should have come here. Okay, let's see how this line came out. This part is tougher than the time-lapse makes it look. Not only did the waves need to have a consistent thickness, but they also needed to feel like they float smoothly from one section of the wall to the next. It required collaboration with me standing a hundred feet back shouting, nope, go up a little higher. No, that doesn't look right. Um, no, bring it down a little. It's a good relationship-building exercise. We are here for this. What's it called? Ruby Mountain. Ruby Mountain... Balloon Festival. That's right. Exciting things were about to start happening on this wall. This is when you can start to see all that measuring and math paying off. Now we mentioned before that we were working hard to finish the mural because we had some special visitors coming. It was finally time. It's 5 30 a.m. And we are on our way to pick up two very, very, very special people that we are both really excited to see. It's been how many years? Two years, I think, since we've seen them, right Luis? Yeah. So excited. The airport, Salt Lake City. We are picking up the boys. Meantime, I'll take a nap because we're up late. They got up early. Gonna get the boys. We haven't seen them in two years and we just... We brought our nephews and nieces and goddaughter and they're just here with us. We'll go pick them up and grab them. I'm in the car to make sure we don't get in trouble as far as I'll be and we'll see them. They're coming right for you in a little bit. Next time on Aren't We There Yet. All right, let's go. Bye, love you Igloo. Bye, love you. We finished up the mural in Elko and hit the road with the boys and oh the adventures. Hey guys, if you enjoyed this video be sure to give us a like. Subscribe to our channel. 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