We're Open!!!!!

Yes, we've moved to our new location at 135 East Main Street - right next to Whimsy! The new space is 2-3 times as big as the previous location, so now there is that much more of The Good Life!

As you would expect, there are all the familiar things from the little store at 113 E. Main - great gourmet foods, kitchen tools, entertaining items, linens, glassware, dishes, barbecue tools, Shannon Martin items, and lots of other things that Nancy will be amazed I didn't think of and remember.

Plus there are lots of completely different and wonderful items to enjoy. In the front window you'll see Pine Cone Hill bedding products. You just have to stop in and feel the blankets and the fabrics used in the sheets, duvet covers, and pillow cases. Besides looking beautiful in your home, they'll feel wonderful when you cuddle up to sleep.

Across the aisle Nancy finally has one place to display all (well, almost all) the dishes, glassware, and table linens. In one massive (15 feet long by over 8 feet tall) glass and wood cabinet, you'll find familiar favorites and many new lines.


Beside the cabinet you will find those unique and special tablecloths. With so much more room, Nancy has added even more linens with many more arriving in the coming weeks. You will want to stop in regularly to see the latest selections.

Another big change with the added space is Nancy is now able to offer more of the special and unique furniture pieces that she's carried on a limited basis at Whimsy. In addition, she's branched out into other areas that she never had space for before. As always, everything is beautiful and unique. For instance, everyone seems to love the little red recliner - it's a wonderful small size, reclines fully (so tempting to fall asleep in!), is wonderfully comfy
with great lumbar support, and (of course) is beautiful. It comes in other colors, but the red is so neat.

There's another really neat thing about the new store location. Now, it's even easier to shop both Whimsy and The Good Life as they are right next to each other. With over 300o square feet of beautiful, fun, tasty, interesting, unique, comfortable, exciting (you get the picture) clothing, cards, dishes, glasses, furniture, gourmet foods, cooking items, bedding, gifts, and so much more, you'll want to stop in often!


Oh yes, on a personal note, now that we're open, and the remodeling is 95% complete (oh yes, there's still more to do while we're open), I'm excited that I can finally get cleaned up and maybe even stay clean for a day or two. Remodeling (at least the way that I do it) is very dirty work.

Progress

Lots of pictures, mostly pictures in this post. Nancy had the last two days off, so she spent most of them on her hands and knees laying tile. With a store of almost 1900 square feet, and each tile one square foot, it's pretty easy to figure out that we've got to lay almost 1900 tiles - Wow! The first picture was taken shortly before noon on Tuesday - only an hour or so after Nancy started.

The last two pictures were taken this afternoon. In the back corner you can see a beautiful red section - a carry over from the current location of "The Good Life". Nancy plans on putting all the great kitchen stuff and probably the delicious gourmet food back there.

If you look to the left of the red wall to the area where we previously stored over a ton of demolition (and two tons of demolition before the last ton), you can see piles of boxes. Between Monday and Tuesday 4 semi's arrived with goodies for the store. My favorite was the 400 pounds of art products - all in one huge box! Oh yes, the one box was on top a pallet sitting inside the trailer. But the room is now full of furniture, art, more furniture, and more stuff is scheduled to arrive every day between now and the end of the month!

In the last picture you can see a green wall section which, with additional trim work and decoration, will hold some of the great dishes and glass wares. You can see that Nancy has 2/3 of the tile down - she's just sailing away!

Getting Closer

Isn't Sunday supposed to be a day of rest? In this case, it was getting the rest of the work done in preparation for tiling. After a little over 5 hours on my knees filling all the seams to ensure no soft spots in the floor, I found out just how big the floor really is -it took a full 45 minutes to sweep the floor using a 24" push broom - Wow!

Today's picture was taken after I painted the floor with primer. The primer seals the floor so the vinyl tile will adhere better. When I stepped back and looked at the room, with white ceiling, white walls, and white floor, all I could think of was a 45 year old song by Cream! Yeah, bad joke. The second picture shows a little patch of the tile (not yet stuck down, just set there for show).

OSB

We've been laying OSB over the existing floor. The existing floor was a combination of flaking tile, OSB, and historic Hardwood. It's a shame that the historic hardwood can't be recovered, but it's buried under multiple layers of other materials, including tile, OSB, plywood, etc.

Here is where we stand after hours of work. Glenn has been driving nails with the rented nail gun, but he'd never have gotten close without Eric's help. Eric has been the main man helping with the renovation. Eric ran the grinder that removed the foam from the basement, Eric removed the rear transition area, and Eric laid most of the OSB.

Notice the walls are white, and the ceilings are white. The floor is tannish, but we'll replace those with beautiful vinyl tile in the next week. One more picture for your review. This is from a different angle, but it also shows the changed color of the walls and ceilings, but, more importantly, it shows that the floor, walls, and ceilings are other than white and beautiful. We'll change that real soon by creating a solid floor of OSB, painted a single color of primer, and then laid with beautiful Travertine tile.

Wow - Huge Progress

The plan is to open September 25 - oh my. This puts a lot of pressure on her team preparing the space. Hey, this is Glenn, the main person preparing the stuff. I'm working with Eric, who is doing everything he can (along with me) to get it done. We're firmly convinced that Nancy is crazy - that her targets for opening the new, expanded The Good Life are crazy. On the other hand, I'll do anything for Nancy, so expect the unexpected.

We painted the ceiling and walls last weekend. This week we've been laying the OSB over the existing flooring so that we can follow with the Tile.

Making Progress

Oh yes, we've been working our butts off trying to make the space into what Nancy would feel was acceptable. As you know, Nancy has really high expectations.

We started painting last weekend. Remember the multiple colors and the "tobacco" paint on the ceiling tiles and the walls? Well, this is what happens to the guy running the spray gun painting the nearly 2000 square feet of ceiling.

So, we painted, and painted, not only the ceiling, but also the walls. All told, we used better than 20 gallons of paint toward creating a wonderful new space for our special clients to enjoy. Here's where we ended the week, where we were when stopped for the weekend.

Middle of Work

I took these pictures last weekend, September 1, before we started painting. Oh yes, we missed taking pictures of the two tons (4ooo pounds) of trash we removed from demolishing the front entryway, the rear transition area, and other areas that were really ugly and nasty. However, here it is before I started painting.

Notice, with the first picture, that the walls are all sorts of colors and the ceiling is a "tobacco" color - a gross yellowish color. Oh yes, he second picture shows the pile of carpet that was 1/2 of the second dump run. In this case, we only had one ton - the pile you see was only 1000 pounds!

The Good Life Expansion

The Good Life will be expanding and moving in late September. The new location will be at the end of the block, next to Whimsy. We've spent hundreds of hours working on the space, but we failed to get any pictures of the very early stages.

Here's what we started with - three areas that had to be demolished/removed. The first area was a storage area/display area behind the west window. The second area was an entry way that included a false ceiling around a second door entering into the main space. The third area was a transition area between the 25x75 foot area in the front of the store and the the 22 x 22 foot area in the rear. Oh yes, everything was covered by carpet - which smelled, like moldy socks. Oh yes, there was the basement, with another layer of carpet, which had been submerged in basement floodings several times. This carpet was foam backed, and the carpet came up real easy - only the foam stayed stuck to the floor. Yuck!!!