Not Too Shabby & Re-Find Living

chalkpaint25

A Special Piece

9:54 AM

I hope you had a chance to see the beautiful Henredon table set.

It was a solid pecan wood table with 2 large leaves, lots of detail and curves...

And 4 upholstered chairs.

I loved painting this set.

I got to play with the finish, bringing out details and letting it shine.....

I loved painting it, and I loved the final results, and I wondered why I didn't keep it.....

I love it that much.

The movers picked it up to delivered it to the Bay Area.

I had a few tears as they carefully wrapped it up and carried it out.

The customer called and said it looks even better than she remembered.....

She had tears in her voice as she thanked us.

That's why it's not at my house.

It went to its forever home.

Details on how I painted the table, chairs, and upholstery are in a previous Blog post.

chalkpaint25

The Flood, New Location

11:53 AM

We spent Thursday moving everything to the new location and now we're starting to settle in, unpack (a little), and set up some things.

(Now filled)

Starting with our Chalk Paint® decorative paint by Annie Sloan, complimentary tools and products, and then I'll set up the front table.

The next room is the 'paint workshop' get all ourChalk Paint® and supplies unpacked and organized for our first workshop (which is today!).

Then I'll work on the upper level.

It was a really nice moment to open our front door and already gave 2 customers find us! After a quick trip to the Farmers Market, which is in our backyard, add a bottle of wine and I've got a great lunch planned.

Hope I see you soon.

chalkpaint25

The Flood, Blender

3:45 PM

We finished boxing up and moving everything from our Auburn Store to our new, temporary location, yesterday.

You never know how much you have till you're packing it away!

It took 4 big moving truck trips, 8 hours of loading & unloading.

I'll admit it was sad to have our super cute store get empty.

But, we've already picked the main paint colors for the floor & walls.

And I'm starting to plan wall treatments and revising how the workshop space lays out.

It's like we took the store, dumped it a giant blender, got it all mixed up, and now we can see how it all lays out.

chalkpaint25

The Flood, Day 18

7:11 PM

Hard to believe but it's been 18 days since our Auburn store flooded.

We've been crazy busy cleaning up the flood, boxing up our littles, working with the insurance companies, and now we've entered the re-building stage.

Since everything.....yes, EVERYTHING has to be removed from our Auburn location for the building work to be completed we found a space to rent.

We start moving everything Wednesday, with the bigger items being moved Thursday.

I'm hoping we'll open at our new location - 1447 Lincoln Way, in the Geri Bray Building by Friday. We'll be setting up shop right below Poppy's.

We've got 2 front doors, each on a different level. We've decided to use the doors facing the Courthouse Coffee Building as our main entrance. It's perfect to park in the upper level parking lot and walk down.

I even think we'll do our workshops by the creek. Pretty inspiring.

I'm actually pretty excited, already trying to figure out how we're going to place our furniture in the new space. I know..... It's kind of a disease. I just LOVE painting furniture and I also love setting up our displays.

This will be where we put all of our fantastic Chalk Paint® decorative paint by Annie Sloan cans.

The new space is really 7 rooms, on 3 levels.

I know, totally intriguing. I'm so used to one big open space.....I'm starting to get excited.

Stay tuned to FB for our actual open date.

Thanks for all of your support.

chalkpaint25

The Flood, Day 6

6:55 PM

Serve-Pro has finished cutting out the drywall, and tapped up our remaining inventory.

Walking along our walks feels like being in a plastic cocoon.

The question pending today is whether we move temporarily into another location, just so we can stay open, or if we move everything into storage while the real rebuilding happens.

This isn't an issue easy to resolve.

Moving either way is a tremendous amount of work.

Setting up a 'temporary' store is just like opening a new store....which we'll have to do in 4-6 weeks (yep! 4-6 weeks) when construction is done......

I don't want to lose any of our wonderful Auburn customers by closing, but honestly this past week has almost broken me.....

I'd love to hear from you guys about what you would do..... Seriously, open a temporary store vs. focus on painting all new stuff for when the building is done?

What would you do?

chalkpaint25

The Flood, Day 3

10:40 PM

Today was our FLOOD SALE.

I put out the call and you guys came.

It was humbling and overwhelming to get such amazing support.

We sold more than 16 pieces of furniture and so much more.

I think it was exactly what we needed to do so we could stack everything in the center of the store so the professionals can do what they need.

It was wonderful to see the excitement people had when they got their discount and their joy when they found a buried treasure they had remembered from a previous trip.

In some ways this was my hardest day as a shop owner. We sold so many amazing pieces, Ethan Allen French style desk, Henredon end-tables, Henredon hutch, Kentucky hardwood table......all pieces of my heart.

But they are really just nice pieces of furniture.

You guys, our customers, you're our real treasure.

Thank you.

chalkpaint25

The Flood, Day 2

9:13 PM

Today was better.

We met our Indepedent Insurance Adjuster to determine what our insurance covers, what we need to do, and reasonable time-frames.

He's awesome!

Lots of experience, lots of knowledge, and very calm....exactly what I need.

Then we came up with a plan;

- we need to create space for all the construction work necessary, we could move it into storage (lots of lifting, moving, and not fun), there is the cost of storage.......or, we could have a FLOOD SALE!