Countdown to The Artistic Home Studio & Boutique Grand Opening

It has been an exciting week!  It started out on Monday when the lease was signed and we obtained keys to the new store and studio!  We are very excited to be residing inside the former "Pillow Park Plaza" now called Park Street Plaza, in the heart of downtown Alameda, CA!

Right now we are targeting the weekend of May 11th for our opening - just in time for Mother's day and the Park Street Spring Festival.  Stay tuned for more details...



Here are some "before" pictures of the space, when it was being used for storage:

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Clearly, we used our imaginations to envision all its potential!  Once the landlords cleared all the stuff out, we discovered underneath the heavily stained, 20-year old carpet that covered the entire floor, was 20-year-old mastic carpet glue, solidified on very old concrete!  Our biggest challenge: what to do with the floor!  After much debate, pricing and research, we decided to grind the glue off with an industrial sander (thanks, Home Depot!), then seal and paint the floor.  In the process of grinding the floor, we created a mess of SLUDGE that needed to be cleaned off.  Here's the floor during this process:

a very noisy sander

sludge

Imagine the fun of getting this cleaned up!  2 wet-dry vacuums, a couple of buckets, 3 adults, 2 kids, scrub brushes and mops later, here's the floor after 3 days:

Although it looks ugly, it's actually quite clean!  Now we have to let it dry out for a week before sealing it.  In the meantime, there are plenty of other exciting things to do!