The Road to Our New Vintage Shop: Part 2

Dressing Room: Idea to Reality

Since my last post I'm happy to report that the dressing room is done!

Dressing rooms can be tricky to set up because we needed it to be big enough to move around in and the curtain had to be tall enough for people of average height to get some privacy.

We secured the wall which is actually two doors that are braced perpendicularly to the wall, screwed in the fixtures to hold the curtain rod, and hammered in our sign. Don't you love Michelle's hand painted Dressing Room sign?

The pictures here show the panes in the doors, which we plan to cover with some graphics for privacy (no peeking as Bertrand says!).





















Dressing Up a Paneled Wall

The other challenge we had was what to do with the paneled back wall? Our back wall is the first thing you see when you walk in and unfinished paneled wood was not the look we wanted.


Michelle and I went back to the store and got a bolt of bright pink fabric to hang over the paneling, to give the wall a soft texture and to brighten up and add a burst of color to the room.

The effect is amazing! We hung our black and white canvas print of Audrey Hepburn from the movie, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and voila! It's starting to really take shape!





Bringing a Glass Display Case Back to Life

Our landlord was kind enough to offer us an old glass case from his basement that was very dirty, dusty, and missing the back sliding doors.

Of course we happily accepted it! The first challenge was to get it up a narrow flight of stairs, which Michelle's son in law and fiance managed without issues.

They didn't think it would fit against the back wall but Michelle assured them, "we measured---it will fit!"

It did fit in perfectly. But once it was there it required serious cleaning. Michelle shop-vacuumed the inside and ruts where the sliding doors were. She then got some black and white floral patterned shelf paper and covered the brown paneling style paper on the bottom of it. We gently lowered the large glass top to the case and wiped it down with Windex.

Years ago me and Michelle went to an auction and bought a bunch of old suitcases--we knew we'd have a shop someday to showcase them! They will need to be aired out, cleaned, repaired, and possibly relined. The pic below shows them before I loaded them up in the car before I took them to the shop. I'll post when they're ready for their closeup!

Tune into our next post on getting the shop ready for our opening in the fall 2016.

We have miles to go before we sleep...