Photos © 2011 Curly Girl Design, Inc./Leigh Standley. all rights reserved.
As our move date to 'big' Marmalade quickly approaches I thought I would keep you abreast of our progress! The spot we are moving into in the town center used to also be a gift shop, so it was easy to imagine it being a retail location, it needed a little “Marmalading” up for it to be everything I imagined. Here is what it looked like before:
Good bones, cute, simple…ok, if I'm being honest, sort of bland in my opinion, but I make greeting cards for a living. I paint everything orange. Who am I to judge? Credibility aside, it was a long way off from my vision so there was work to be done!
So 3 weeks ago, when we took the keys, we opened the door to this:
The previous owner even left us a nice note wishing us well. Always a good sign. My first order of business, regardless of what else I wanted to do with the space, is pull up those dang commercial carpets that have been there for one hundred years and pray to all that is good and holy that there are wood floors under there. Now, we asked around before we got to this point, and the old magic 8 ball 'outlook was not good'…most people, including the landlord suspected concrete or plywood. And even if there were wood floors, they would most likely be coated in asbestos. Wheeee!
So we pulled up the carpet, tested for asbestos (negative!) and:
BAM!!! Perfect, beautiful (downright gorgeous at certain points) rock maple floors that had never, I repeat NEVER been walked on. I'm not going to lie. It brought a tear to my eye. This is as far as I got with the photos before they finished the floors and then swiftly covered them up with protective board while the painters and electrician came, but I assure you they are awe inspiring. This week the painters make it really come to life and then the downstairs carpet gets put down…and we begin the fun stuff!! More photos soon!!
