The Hayes Family Fire House

Welcome to the world of the 10-cent Coke machine, where kids walking home from school stopped to flip open a skinny door and yank out cold bottles with a click.

Welcome to happenstance and history.

Welcome to the Hayes Family’s fire house.

In a part of town that once was home to elegant sprawling estates is a former fire house made into an elegant home.

The work was done by a guy who has spent decades snapping chalk lines, erecting interior walls and installing molding.

Only this time, Steve Hayes, 51, did the work for his wife and three children instead of a customer.

The Phillips Beach Fire House never saw Steve Hayes coming.

And he never saw himself living in it.

But it happened.

Here’s how:

In April 2010, the owner of the Donald T. Hayes general contracting company ambled inside the town-owned buidling to eyeball it for a friend who was interested in buying it

The firefighters had left years earlier but the ambulance company was still working there.

It wasn't pretty inside. Concrete floors. Tongue-and-groove boards on the wall painted lime green. 

"It was a hell hole," he said.

But structurally it was like a fortress.

The walls are 20-inch thick granite cut from a Rockport quarry, said Hayes, 51, sitting in a part of the house that once stabled the giant fire house horses. 

It turned out that the project was too much for his friend.

But Hayes remembered the fire house from years before.

He grew up a 5-iron away in a house with 10 brothers and sisters.

Forty-three years earlier he was a regular at the fire house. And so was every other Swampscott kid with a hankering for a sugar rush.

The Hayes parents did not allow their 11 kids to drink soda. 

Other parents had the same rule for their kids. Still, that made the cold fire house cokes all the sweeter.

The idea of living in the house grew on Hayes and he put in a bid for it.

The bid was accepted by the town in July 2010 and Sept. 17, the demolition began.

But first he hosted a party for people to see it in its preconstruction state.

The party was six hours of people running upstairs and sliding down the fire house pole.

The Dumpster truck driver who arrived the next day and hauled off 12 loads of demo material was a Lynn firefighter who had spent a lot of time at the station.

The project was nonstop for Hayes. He got some of his best ideas at 3 am.

He’s a high energy guy who talks fast and likes to keep moving. 

He even wears his contractor’s pencil pointing down from his cap. When he grabs it the pencil is already bound in the right direction for the board he'll mark or dimensions he'll write.

His daughter Carley said her father did not waste any time moving ahead with the project. Every time she would come home another part of the house was done.

Today the spacious home glistens.

Chandeliers hang in each room. Half-round windows hang below tray ceilings. The floors are southern yellow pine. 

You can play golf in the closets.

Getting the home built was a long and hard project but fun.

One day when he was tearing out floor joists from the upper floor, ancient smelly hay rained down.

It was the storage area for the hay the house horses ate.

The B&M railroad had, years ago, stopped right at the fire house to unload bales of hay for the horses that pulled fire engine apparatus.

He also found cast-iron horse troughs.

He found arches behind walls that looked just like the arches he planned to install.

He scoured the Internet for a vintage Coke machine.

He found his machine in Swampscott, a 1963 model just like the one that had stood at the former station.

He was at a soccer game and man watching the game told him his parents had one in his garage.

Later that day the machine was in the back of Hayes' pickup.

Today it sits on the second floor.

The family moved into the home in June.

About a half-dozen firefighters who once worked at the station have stopped by to see their old fire house.

The fire house was built in 1903.

There’s a fire alarm box on the exterior by the entrance.

Yank down the handle and press the alarm and it rings the doorbell.

Inside the former fire house is a home, the Hayes fire house home.