Some more before and after shots

Yesterday we ripped out the ugly carpet from the window. We weren't sure what we'd find.



What we found was some glue-covered wood that looked kind of promising. . .



The landlord George was very excited about the original wood that was on there (so was I). Unfortunately, he won't let me sand it off, he wants to use stripper. As in toxic, bad, evil stripper. I want no part of this. I thought by explaining how stripper is expensive, as well as toxic, that he might be persuaded to let me sand it. He wasn't. He just said he'd buy the stripper. So I'm hoping he will also do the stripping. I don't want anything to do with that.

I took the shiny brass sconces off the walls and painted them. Here's the "after" of one of those.



Here's the front and back wrap counters before (notice the brass sconces):



And here's what I've done so far with it. . . (ignore the bad penmanship)



And last, we have a wall with shelf all painted! And the jewelry case and Mrs. Meyer's display.

Inspector alert!

I need to get inspected soon. I think I need light up EXIT signs, which Jon can install this weekend. I just need to find a place that sells them. And get the landlord to buy them. Ugh. I think the electric place in town probably has them. We need to get this done before they can inspect. I also need to get business insurance. That's one of my goals for today. Luckily, my agent is right across the tracks from me, so he should be able to pop over to make some big money. He's a good agent. Another one of my big guys that "gets me". Gotta love that.

I've been meeting lots of wonderful people walking by the shop while I'm working. It's great to get their feedback and hear the enthusiasm in their voices. Lots of people are giving me free advice & offering their help (and they are pros, not like all the free advice I dispense ad nauseum).

Last night around 8:30 I was leaving and somebody had pushed an ice cream cone onto my car like a hood ornament. So I went to the ice cream shop to file a complaint. The guys that own it are friends of mine now, and I just wanted to give them crap. They weren't there, but lots of other neighbors were. I got to meet their new employee (who had smoothie practice the other day and we benefited, since Tom brought down the fruits of his labor for me and all the worker bees who were helping on Sunday). He could not identify the culprit. I'm watching now. . . Don't mess with me, kids. I could be your best friend or your worst enemy!

It's coming together!

We have two of the three walls painted (one is all shingles all the time--I decided to leave that Pandora's box alone). I painted all the shiny brass sconces a muted light sage today. I am sort of afraid to hook them back up--electricity and I are not on good terms. Jon is out of town this week (again!) though, so I may do it, just to surprise him with how handy his wife can be. He had to take the good ladder with him, so I'm waiting to paint the back wall until I can use the good one. Janet left me a ladder that is flimsy and aluminum. It's okay for a quick light bulb change, but I'm not too comfortable with ladders as it is, so I'll wait for Jon to return with the sturdy one.

Now I'm looking for a counter top for my back counter (wrapping and packing station). I've been searching in alleys for any construction debris, but I have found no counters. I did get the lower cabinets from a dumpster (well, actually, they put them in their driveway next to the dumpster for me to rescue). I'm telling you, just put the word out that you need something, and it will find you. So I'm putting it out there that I need a counter (6' long, preferably). Just post a comment and I'll come get it! They have them at Menard's, but that's not as "green" as rescuing one.

A lot of the products are in. It's so hard not to play with all the toys--they look awesome! Luckily, the girly stuff hasn't arrived yet, so I'm not depleting the testers in my "spare" time. I was sent some great samples of a line of nail polish that doesn't have all the toxic crap in it. It's called Butter London. They have really cool colors. It's a little pricey, but I'd be their first distributor in the Midwest. And they have really cool colors. The hand and nail cream is amazing, too. I'll have to find a way to make it happen. Angel(a) knows a gal who works there as the sales person. She hasn't steered me wrong yet, so I think I'll give it a shot, if they don't make you order every single color. They have really cool colors. Did I mention that? If any of you reading this are producers of something you aspire to sell, I'm telling you right now--send samples (unless it's a car or bike or something really expensive). Every company that sent me samples (especially full size samples) is getting an order from me. Except the line of body products that all smell like food. That really bothers me.

Speaking of samples, a local couple was walking by the other night and stopped to chat about the store. She makes soap and lip balm and brought some by for me to try yesterday. I'm lovin' the lip balm, and the soap smells great. So Olive Owl is now a product I'll be carrying! (and her logo is adorable!) She also does fused glass jewelry, so I put in a request for that too!

One week progress report

Today I have two or three friends coming by to help me paint! And Jon will be back from his musical tour of the Midwest (okay, it was just Peoria and Rock Island). Now I need to slip into leadership mode--not my strong suit. Luckily, Lisa will be back, so she can suggest ways to make this go smoothly. Nanci will also be lending a hand as well.

I went to Green Home Experts (link at the bottom of this page) and picked up their paint color deck--they also have the low VOC paint (of course!). There are soooo many more colors to choose from there, and the prices are comparable to the Home Depot Fresh Aire paint. They're closed tomorrow, so hopefully I can decide on the accent colors today and go pick them up. Here's a picture of the green that we painted the purple and white shelves:

I knew this wouldn't be easy. . .

. . . and I was right! Nothing has gone wrong, per se, but as we are painting and cleaning up and stuff, the goods are being delivered. I've gotten the two biggest, heaviest orders in (Melissa and Doug wooden toys--18 boxes & Mrs. Meyer's cleaning products--6 50+ pound boxes), and the storage room is full already! This will just make me work faster and harder at getting the shelves and walls painted so I have a place to put stuff! Here's that "before" picture of one of the shelves we picked up on Monday:



My friend Lisa and her daughter, Paloma, came over yesterday to help me paint. We got one of the shelves almost done, and the other two are prepped and ready to paint. It's a little hard to be productive with a three year old around, but she kept us entertained, and she helped us "paint" stuff (like the shop vac) with her own bucket of water and a brush. Lisa has done a lot of professional painting jobs, so it was good to have someone with more knowledge about surface prepping to work with.

I got the low VOC paint, and man, is it great! There is absolutely no smell. It covers well, and dries fast, too! The paint lady at Home Depot was so excited that I bought it, and lots of customers were there and got the speech about how great it is. Hopefully they considered it for their own use! They color it by putting a little baggie of pigment into the can, bag and all, and putting it on the paint shaker/mixer thing. The bag dissolves, and the paint comes out perfectly smooth--you know I was looking for that baggie when I was stirring it!

Coming along nicely. . .

Here's Jon (the hubby) trying to remove the writing from the front window


I feel like this is going really slowly. I just started. It's only been three days. There has been a lot of cleaning going on. I never realized how much hidden hair there is in a hair salon (and in the strangest places)! I am actually making a lot of headway. We picked up those shelves on Monday night. Nobody got hurt (unless you count sore muscles!). They are ginormous!! 6' wide, 7' tall and about a foot and a half deep. They barely cleared the door of the 15' truck we rented. I'll post some "before" pictures of them soon. Right now they're lavender and white. That's all about to change. Thank you to Mark Mosher for coming to the storefront to help us get them off the truck! It took four of us to get them in (thank goodness that there was another customer at that closed store picking up stuff!)

I just realized that I haven't posted about my angel(a)! Through a long string of serendipitous events, I have been blessed with a real retail expert (a former Nordstrom merchandiser named Angela). My friend Laurie in Tacoma sold her something on etsy, and she was from Berwyn (but she used to live in Seattle). So Laurie mentioned to her that she has a friend (me) in Berwyn. Angela said I could call her, so I did, because Laurie's stuff is super cute and unique and so I figured Angela was probably pretty cool. Boy, is she! She is totally helping me figure out a color scheme for the store, and she's been surfing the world wide web finding great display ideas. She's a stay at home mom with a newborn, Oscar, and a four year old genius in the making, Arden. They all came to the store today in the rain and got me so excited about colors for the interior and exterior! We're narrowing it down, and trying to brainstorm about the unfortunate shingles around the top of the walls. The landlord doesn't want me to paint or remove them. She's been so helpful! I have a feeling that this will be a friendship that lasts much longer than this project.

There have actually been a lot of VERY helpful people along the way so far. All the other merchants in the area have been awesome. Tom from the ice cream shop came over to see the place today. He and his partner, Jose, are leading the Depot District Merchants Association and doing a swell job of it. I'm so glad I joined up with that group before I got started. They're all full of helpful advice and moral support.

I also met the mailman Bob and the UPS man Scott (see, if I write their names here, I can come back and refresh my memory if I need to). They are both really nice. We'll see how nice Scott is in a couple of weeks when all the products come in. . .

Keys are in hand (purse, actually)!

Today we went and got the keys to the store, paid the deposit and the June rent, and started working on the place. Tomorrow I'll put my temporary sign in the window--Coming Soon! First I have to get the rest of the paint off the window. Jon got most of it scraped off, but there's a bit of a residue still on there. I'm sure I'll have to use some kind of a toxic chemical to get it off, and that sucks on so many levels. The phone gets hooked up tomorrow, and I have to rent a truck and go pick up some huge display shelving and my cash register from the store that's closing in Palos Park tomorrow night. Then the real work begins!