Pictures of the office progress

When my husband's home, I just don't get a chance to sit down at the computer much. First I'm embarrassed by how much time I spend here and how little time I spend cleaning, cooking and other housewifey things. Second, I feel guilty that I'm not standing right there helping him, even though when I do try to help, we end up arguing because I can't read his mind and don't understand what he's trying to tell me to do! He thinks after 34 years of marriage I'm supposed to know what he means when he says, "Hold this up". Hold what up? Where do I hold it? I can't reach that. What can I use to hold it up? Or I should know when he says, "Hand me that ......" and trails off not saying 'hand him what', that I should know exactly which tool he wants. Then I'm not strong enough to do the work of a burly man and cause him to get hurt. No, I was not the cause of the board to the head the other day!! Couldn't have even prevented that one.

At the same time I don't think I should be here at the computer, I'm also not allowed to help much - for the reasons mentioned above. I'm also not allowed to paint. Except trim. I'm "allowed" to paint trim. He says he doesn't like the way I roll paint on. I think that's just the easiest part and he "allows" me to do the hard part. In the end, he's just a control freak. I've accepted that, he's accepted that and we generally know how to behave.

Here is a before picture of the little utility room. I didn't get one of the built in cabinet and shelves. Wish I had. Those have been torn out leaving holes in the walls. The view from that window? His workshop. I wish now I'd said go ahead and block it up, but I didn't, so it's there. Guess I can put some pretty curtains up there. Maybe even a big picture and pretend there's a nice view.



Here it is with the first coat of paint. This paint is Navajo White from Sherwin Williams. On our kitchen cabinets it looks white. In this room it looks yellow. Not what I'd wanted, but since I'm not doing the work, I'm not going to complain. Besides, it's not bad. I can work with this. Doesn't the room look tiny? It is, but somehow looks smaller in the picture.



My sweetie goes back to work tonight. He's an electrician at a paper mill. All his life he's never had to work shift work, but the plant manager decided a few years ago that almost everyone would work rotating shifts. He's enjoying it, but it sure messes with my time. He and a couple other guys swap out shifts and have long weekends. He's been off five days this time. A mini vacation! That's good, sort of. It's great if we go somewhere and good that he can work on these projects, but bad that I can't keep a normal routine.

I saw there's going to be an estate sale in town tomorrow and I'm still broke! I haven't had a chance to put anything on eBay for some quick cash 'cause we've been working on this room. Boohoo! I'll scrape up something. I've never let being broke totally stop me before.

Have I told you about my shop?

Yes, I have a shop. A store. A building. Not at my house. Let me tell you about it.

An antique dealer here in town had the best little shop. "Best", not as in 'really great stuff', but the building itself was cool. It has the potential to be fixed up purty, is a perfect size, is only about 3 miles from my house, and the rent was only $280. I told her many times if she ever decided to move out to let me know, that I might want to rent it. My idea was to use it as a warehouse/office. A place to conduct my internet business to get the mess out of my house. It's not in a good spot for walk in traffic, but is perfect for the above and maybe occasional real life sales.

She called last December and said she was moving to another location. If I still wanted it to call her landlord. This is the first building I ever suggested that my husband agreed with, so we took that as a sign. I jumped on it even though the timing was horrible and the rent had gone up to $300 a month.

Why was the timing so bad? We were in the middle of a major house redo. We'd had the floors throughout the house redone and granite put in the kitchen, but other than that, we were doing all the work ourselves. Painting, new cabinet doors, new door trim and doors, new crown molding. We (my husband) even enclosed a leg of the carport for his workshop. Yeah, I say "we" on all of that, but my job has been mostly supervision. He's a hands on kind of guy and I just don't do things his way.

We had all this mess, with no end in sight - we're still not finished - and needed to move things from our storage unit to the shop and I actually need to make rent! Ack! That means I can't just work when I'm in the mood any more. Well, I still do, but shouldn't! Hubby had to pay the rent for me this month. Sigh.

This is how our carport looked for months.



People kept stopping by thinking we were having a yard sale! Two or three weeks in a row there were yard sales up the street from us. I literally had to make a sign saying "Yard sale not here" and watch for people trying to shop us. It was so funny. I'd see a car pull up and meet them as they got out of their car and say, "We're remodeling. The yard sale is up the street." LOL

Here are some pictures of the shop before we put all our household overflow and my boxes and boxes of stuff that's not in the booth, and empty boxes to pack things in and computer, and camera equipment, and...... There are a lot of pictures, so please bear...bare?......bear.... with me.

Outside. They were working on the road at the time. That's all fixed now. It's the store on the right, on the end. Next to Sherry's Beauty Shop. The one with the flea market signs all over it. Those signs are still there. I couldn't get them down and it's on my husband's to do list. That's my shadow by the lamppost shadow. I look like Cousin Itt, don't I?



The front doors from the inside:



The best feature, the brick wall up front. The other dealer didn't use this wall to it's best advantage. You hardly even knew there was a brick wall when she was there.



Walls two and three in the front:





These are of the back, through the wide door opening. There's also an office that I didn't take a picture of.











After seven months, I'm getting a little antsy to get the place fixed up. I do go down there to work, but don't really like to. I only run the air conditioner when I'm there and the place smells. It hits me when I open the door. It's a cloying, old, air freshener smell. That puts me in a bad mood right off and because it's just boxes and mess everywhere, it makes me unhappy. So I think I'll go down today and see if I can organize and clean a bit.

I'm trying to decide whether I should open a few days a week or one weekend a month or once every three months. I'm afraid if I HAD to be there certain days every single week, I'd get sick of it and begin to hate it. I'm leaning toward the once a month event. My first plan was once every three months, but monthly might be more wise financially.

Hope you enjoyed the tour. I don't think I'll show you what it looks like at the moment, but let's just say, it reminds me a little of the carport when it was such a mess. No, not that bad, but messy still. I hate to do much until we paint, but who knows when that will be?