– Guyanese couple hailed for renovating 110-year-old house in Atlanta

 Elisabeth grew up with her single-parent mother, Cecily Jackman, in Georgetown, Guyana, in a wood frame house — “similar to a cabin” — sitting on a concrete slab covered with a vinyl floor.

(Rockdale Citizen, Atlanta) Renovating a 110-year-old house on Smyrna Road in Conyers, Elisabeth and Colin Knights have converted inside doorways to arches, built laundry and pantry niches in the kitchen, added a bathroom by inserting a wall in the dining room, hung drywall and painted walls. They redid the wiring and plumbing.
“The crawl space under the house is about 12 inches,” Colin said of the plumbing ordeal. That is down-and-dirty work, no doubt about it.
They subcontract when necessary, but the Knights claim they do 75 percent of the labor performed by their Conyers company, Aklipse Asset Management Inc.
“There was a barn back there we had to take down. We hired a guy to do it,” Elisabeth said, pointing to the back end of the Smyrna Road lot, which includes a sightly wooded area. They also contracted out the new roofing, but everything else is being done by the industrious couple.
They work long days — 10, 12 hours or longer.

“We’re coming to the end, so we’ll push even harder,” Colin said.
Neighbors have stopped and expressed gratitude that they are renovating the house, Elisabeth noted. In fact a brother and sister, Julian Anderson and Jan Kirkpatrick, showed up one day, said the house was their grandparents’ home and pointed out where they played as children and which room their dad occupied as a child.
“They both started crying — they were so happy to see we were giving the house new life,” Elisabeth said.
“I was so afraid that it would just be torn down as so many older homes are,” Kirkpatrick said. “You are giving it new life, and to me that is a precious thing.”
“It’s nice when someone comes by like that and gives the history of the house. Each house has a story,” Elisabeth said. “I got their phone numbers and told them when we finished I’d call them and have them come back to see it.”
The Knights have built Aklipse Asset Management from scratch to a company valued at $4.1 million. They have purchased more than 40 houses in metro Atlanta and Florida for renovation and sale or lease, including two houses in Covington and several in Conyers, including their own.
“We’re revitalizing neighborhoods, one house at a time,” Colin said.

“We’ve given ourselves the education to do everything in-house,” Elisabeth said. That includes the construction, real estate and administration parts of the business.
However, initially they did all of the work themselves. That was the toughest part of the journey from humble beginnings to success.
Elisabeth grew up with her single-parent mother, Cecily Jackman, in Georgetown, Guyana, in a wood frame house — “similar to a cabin” — sitting on a concrete slab covered with a vinyl floor. Guyana is perched on the northeast coast of South America, north of Brazil and sandwiched between Venezuela on the west and Suriname to the east.
Dreaming that one day she would rise above her destitute living conditions by owning a shop, Elisabeth managed to get into a local college with financial assistance from her godmother, Donna Fraser, a teacher in New York City. She worked as a cashier in a jewelry store to meet expenses.
She credits her mother for setting a good example for work ethic. Jackman worked for a construction company and made extra money with little businesses on the side, such as preparing lunches for sale to coworkers.

Colin spent his early childhood in Georgetown, but his family moved to Washington, D.C., when he was 12 years old. There, the family lived in a triplex, with a separate family on each of the three floors of the house.
Joining his older brothers in construction work at age 14, Colin found his niche.
“Building things became my passion,” he said. He also worked as a cashier.
“The more we worked the more we ate,” he said. His parents, Charles and Margaret Knights, set the example of how hard work is necessary to make ends meet.
Colin’s entrepreneurial spirit led to success as a construction contractor, and he moved to Miami to pursue his business.
In April 2005, while in Guyana visiting grandparents, friends and family, Colin found himself at a barbecue party that he initially didn’t want to attend. While he sat around with others, someone coming through the front gate caught his eye.

“I watched her every move as she was weaving through the crowd,” he recalled.
Elisabeth also had not wanted to attend the party.
“A friend of mine invited me, and I thought I’d go quick, say hi and leave early. But when I saw Colin, it was like the world stopped.”
“It was a magical feeling on both sides,” Colin agreed. They ended up talking past midnight.
Colin returned to Miami, established a second construction business and, determined to get Elisabeth close by, set up an apartment for her in Nassau, Bahamas, while he worked to get her a visa to come to the U.S.
During a year’s delay with the visa process, Colin visited Elisabeth every weekend in Nassau, where they married. They exchanged vows at a courthouse, had a spaghetti dinner and walked on the beach.

“When I was 14 I had my big wedding all planned out for when I met Mr. Right,” Elisabeth said. “This was beautifully simple, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was it was the right guy.”
Since Elisabeth couldn’t attend college in Nassau, Colin brought her a laptop and books, and she engaged in intense self-study.
When the visa was approved, Elisabeth came to the U.S. for the first time in her life. The airplane arrived in Miami at night and the seemingly endless lights of the Florida coastal megalopolis dazzled her.
“It was like a science fiction movie. It was like I was transported to another planet,” she said.
In 2009 the couple moved to Conyers and started the work that eventually became Aklipse Asset Management. When Elisabeth got off after working two jobs, she and Colin spent several hours slipping flyers under doors to promote the business.