Bobo Hachmeister, of Waldoboro, pictured on July 11 in the former Paragon button factory on the Medomak River, where he has lived for 27 years. A woodworker, boater, and artist, Hachmeister has converted the factory to a studio and workshop where he undertakes projects including artwork, restoring boats, and rehabilitating the historic 1888 building. (Molly Rains photo)
When Bobo Hachmeister first saw a photo of Waldoboro’s former Paragon button factory — all five stories and roughly 25,000 square feet of it — he was paging through a boating magazine at home in Beaufort, N.C., where he lived at the time. An aerial photograph showing the building and the Medomak River first caught his eye. The factory was listed as “for sale.”
The year was 1997, and Hachmeister, who had been entertaining a vague desire to move to Maine, had an affinity for and experience restoring “big, old, beautiful buildings,” as he put it in an interview July 11. He made arrangements to view the property, and hasn’t looked back since.
Today, Hachmeister has lived for 27 years inside the factory, which once employed dozens of locals to manufacture buttons and plastic trinkets and now serves as a home, studio, library, gallery, and ongoing restoration project for the Waldoboro artist and woodworker.
Moving to “the button factory,” as many still refer to the property, is just one of many bold decisions and unique living arrangements that have characterized Hachmeister’s life.
Brought up in small Powers Lake, Wis., Hachmeister spent much of his youth at his father’s marina. There, Hachmeister developed a love for boats and sailing that he has carried with him throughout his life. Through building and working on boats, he also became a skilled woodworker.
“I was brought up as a boat builder, and from that, you can branch out into a lot of different things,” he said.
A curious student, Hachmeister attended public schools in Wisconsin and went on to attend college at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where he studied “randomly,” taking a wide variety of classes.
“I think my official major was history, with a minor in anthropology or something,” Hachmeister said. His goal in attending college was not to achieve a specific degree. Rather, Hachmeister said, he was enthusiastic about the opportunity to simply indulge his curiosity.
“I just went to learn,” he said. “Isn’t learning an ongoing thing, all throughout your life? You’re constantly learning. To me, that would be the end goal.”
Today, Hachmeister’s commitment to learning and curiosity has not abated. Evidence of this is visible throughout the button factory. Countless volumes of reference books and literature fill handmade bookshelves and lie in stacks on coffee tables and desks throughout the space.
“Learning is what I do,” Hachmeister said. “It’s getting a little weird — at a certain point, it’s almost like I’m hoarding.”
Hachmeister does put his knowledge, and reference collection, to use, even pulling one volume – an atlas of Midcoast Maine islands – from a shelf during a conversation with The Lincoln County News, paging through pages of islands he has visited in his time sailing local waters.
Another practice Hachmeister has kept up throughout his adult life is woodworking, including boatbuilding and restoration, which he has been interested in since college.
“There’s something about boats that gets into you,” Hachmeister said. “I’ve made sails, I’ve delivered boats from here to there, that kind of thing.”
His love of woodworking led Hachmeister to begin building cabinets and custom furniture and to begin taking on interior design projects. Hachmeister moved around throughout his young adulthood, spending time in Florida, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.
After getting married and becoming a father, while his children were still small, Hachmeister made another bold decision: with his family, he boarded a 53-foot wooden sailboat and embarked on several years of living, and raising small children, at sea.
“I had a 2-year-old daughter and a baby, and we got on the boat and we sailed around,” Hachmeister said.
The family sailed around Central America, spending time off the coast of Honduras and Guatemala. Hachmeister’s third child, his youngest son, was born during that period.
Bobo Hachmeister, of Waldoboro, gestures to a lathe set up outside the former Paragon button factory, where he has lived for 27 years. Hachmeister is a woodworker and artist who enjoys restoring boats and old buildings. (Molly Rains photo)
It was an adventure, Hachmeister said, but the lifestyle eventually began to take a toll. The work involved in maintaining the boat, originally built in 1938, was substantial, and Hachmeister’s ex-wife was prone to seasickness. After a few years, the couple returned to shore, settling in Beaufort, N.C
Lately, Hachmeister welcomes his fully-grown children to the button factory for occasional visits. He plans to leave the property to them some day, though he said he would not expect them to take on the work inherent to life in the factory and accepts that they may opt to sell it.
For now, however, Hachmeister is committed to maintaining and restoring the button factory, where he expects to remain for the rest of his life, he said.
In the winter months, Hachmeister spends most of his time in one of the building’s offices, which can be heated more easily, he said. The rest of the year, he opens the windows wide and lives and works throughout the factory.
Inside, expansive windows let in plenty of light as the sun slants, low and golden, over the Medomak in the afternoon, illuminating Hachmeister’s collections of artwork, uniquely handcrafted furniture, books, instruments, and oddities. One wall in a downstairs living space features dozens of clocks, all purchased second-hand, ticking out of sync; elsewhere are paintings and other art pieces including those made by Hachmeister himself.
Hachmeister’s unique living quarters inspire curiosity in passers-by and history buffs who sometimes come down the drive to inquire about the building, he said.
Other visitors are less talkative. Hachmeister said he knows of a few cats that patrol the premises for mice. Once in a while, he has observed wilder creatures passing through the building including, recently, a skunk who meandered through his living room before seeing itself out.
Hachmeister said he has faced criticism for the outward appearance of the button factory. However, he said, in terms of work that needs to be done to restore the building, there are some interior structural elements that require attention most urgently and therefore have to take priority.
“I’m maintaining the important bits,” he said. “Cosmetically, it’s looking rough, and I get some criticism about that. Well, I’d like to have it with a fresh coat of paint and blah, blah, blah, myself, but first I have to fix these sills and the other big, structural elements.”
On July 11, one sill, removed from the structure for a coat of sealant, sat drying in the afternoon sunlight outside the factory. Around it were scattered tools and sawhorses, a lathe, Hachmeister’s brightly painted pickup truck, laundry drying in the summer afternoon breeze, and various cans of brightly colored paint with which Hachmeister is continuously painting the broad asphalt drive that connects the factory and Friendship Road.
That afternoon, Hachmeister said, he had just finished staining a set of 11 French doors that he had built and would soon install inside the factory.
Hachmeister divides his time between the work required to care for the factory and his own artistic and woodworking endeavors. Sometimes, the two align, as in the case of the brightly painted driveway or the handmade stained glass windows that Hachmeister installed on the factory’s first floor.
When he is creating art for himself, Hachmeister works in a range of media, often painting. It is variety, he said, that is key to keeping the creative process – and life – joyful.
“There’s no guide, there’s no plan,” he said. “That’s sort of how it has to be. If it’s planned, then it becomes annoying, and then it’s not fun.”
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