Shop Progress

Things at the new shop are going a little slower than I would like, but they are coming along. We've had a few setbacks that added two large unexpected projects onto our pile which can seem a bit discouraging, but all of the walls in the four main rooms are patched, sanded and painted and a few of the larger projects have been checked off the to do list of doom. As it sits right now, we are pretty close to on schedule which feels a lot better than a couple of weeks ago when most of the April list was sitting unfinished. I have been taking lots of pictures of the project as we come along, but I tend not to share them because most people can't see past the mess to the potential that Sarah and I see. A great example of this would be the former kitchen that we are turning into our classroom. I wanted to call these "before" and "after" shots, but really they are before and during shots since we are still working on this area.

On the left you have the exposed furnace and hot water heater. While we couldn't rip these out and relocate them, we could build a closet to enclose them. Still to be added are the two vented doors that will serve to keep the ugliness out of sight while providing full and easy access should something go wrong.

Previously, the wires and ductwork coming from the furnace were completely exposed. To remedy this we created a new wall enclosing it so that it will never be seen again. We have since sanded and painted so that it looks like it was always there. We also moved the thermostat control off the sales floor and into the classroom so it is less likely to be tampered with.

On the plus side, the front of the building is really coming together and tends to distract people from the big mess inside. We painted the door and window trim, added pink rocking chairs and a second set of pink shutters. We still need to paint the upstairs window trim, attach the latticework below the porch, strip and paint the porch, add the shop sign, install the rain barrel, build and fill the raised flower bed, install a porch light, and make new house numbers, but even lacking these things it looks more complete than any of the other areas. Perspective is a funny thing.