Highs and lows of shop fitting

Well, we are one week and 2 days in and I can now fully appreciate what people mean when they talk about the stress of owning a business. This past week may well have been one of the most stressful of my life! We have gone from cupcake hell to a shell of a shop and today we start rebuilding it back up to Palomino glory.

The place was originally a cupcake shop, stainless still with black and white decor was the theme and I'm telling ya it was all a bit depressing. See the the picture below, that was the mural painted across the largest wall in the shop. What a pleasure it was to paint straight across their sad sack faces. And what, the what is going on with the little boy seemingly held hostage behind the window. It was all a bit creepy.

There have been many ups and downs during the course of the past 9 days. Abosolute low of the week was setting off the fire alarm for the whole building. It was only dust that sparked the alarms into action but it sure is tough being carm with the robotic voice of devil man telling you to evacuate the building. Lesson #11 - (we reckon you must have at least 10 up your sleeve by now), always cover up your smoke detectors before starting dusty building work. Remember to take off the covers at the end of the day otherwise if there is a real fire and yours are covered up bye bye insurance claim.

Another nightmarish day was removing the conrete that held the old fridges and bench in place. Dad and Charlie worked for 7 hours with zero break, jack-hammering and hauling concrete out of there. They were broken people by the time I returned (I was working at my sister's place) but they did a damn good job and got it done. Lesson #12 - leasing a shop that is full of equipment may seem like a good deal at the time but unless it is top quality and positioned exactly where you want it, then forget it. We now wish we had rented an empty shell instead of wasting probably 6 whole days moving or removing the crap we dont want.

Have no fear there have been many highs amongst the shit. Getting that last tile chipped off the wall, after countless cuts on arms and legs and smacking our thumbs with the hammer for the fiftieth time. That's me and Charlie below working side by side completing the last few bits. Lesson #13 - don't wear shorty shorts in a building site, Charlie got some mean scar resulting cuts on those long legs of hers.

We also managed to sell lots of bits and bobs on ebay that we found in the shop and didn't want. This included off-loading some metal stools to a lovely lad called 'hijacker79' and 3 garden chairs to 'scum_of_the_earth'. Lovely, lovely ebay names people have these days. Lady luck was on our side finding a buyer for the chandeliers. A friend of a friend knew a person who knew a person type situation and hey presto they're coming to remove them for us and will pay good dollar too.



It has been a hard slog, there's no denying it. The learning curve is steep in amongst all these nail biting situations but I definitely feel / hope that the worst of it is behind me. Now comes the decorating and installing, isn't that the fun part? We'll let you know.

Passionate war cry

My victory salute