Customers wowed by look of barber shop

When people walk through the doors of the new Stefanec's Barber Shop, which opened roughly two weeks ago at 19227 Lorain Road, the reaction is "wow!"

"We get a lot of wows" said sibling co-owners Julia and David Stefanec.

"Wow" is a pretty accurate way to describe the shop, which in a year's time underwent a stunning transformation from a dilapidated former service garage turned builder's office to a gleaming, full-service barber shop with a wall of windows overlooking the Cleveland Metroparks Rocky River Reservation.

The transformation is all that more remarkable in that the work was done almost entirely by the Stefanec family.

"My dad (Frank) and my brother did everything," said Julia, referring to the building, framing, roofing and finishing work. She said that they hired specialty contractors to handle the plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical work.

When the siblings purchased the old Bain Builders property a year ago, the structure was in such poor condition that it should probably have been condemned. It had a flat roof that she said was "threatening to cave in at any moment," Julia said.

This did not deter the Stefanec siblings, who said that they grew up in a family where everything was under construction all the time.

"My brother knew how to drive a bulldozer before he could drive a car," said Julia.

David laughed and said that not to be left out, while his father Frank was busy working on the house, he was out back building tree forts.

"We have vision in our family," they said. "I think it is a sickness almost," said David of the need to constantly be building something.

Sickness or not, the ability to do the work themselves was what made the dramatic transformation possible.

"There is no way it would have been feasible financially to have contractors do all the work," said David....