Progress on our New Storefront & Offices

After more than a year of struggling to get our inventory under control, we did a little rearranging of things in our warehouse and figured out that we have enough open floor space to build our storefront, editorial offices and a new tool assembly area.

We were shocked that our plan worked.

For the last month, we have been building out the storefront and offices on the first and second floors. It’s going quickly because we had done a lot of prep work during the agonizing first phase of repair and restoration.

Our plan is to hold our Open Day on Nov. 23 at our current storefront at 837 Willard St. After that, we will move all our retail and editorial offices to the Anthe Building at 407 Madison Ave., about a half-mile away.

Here’s how that looks: We’ve finished building the walls in the storefront area at the Anthe Building, refinished the floor and have almost finished the interior painting.

When we move our retail operation there, we will have all our books displayed on the Monticello bookcase. We are building a tool chest that will be used to display our tools. Our apparel will be pinned to a big corkboard on the wall. And a Holtzapffel workbench will be in the center of the room for demos and trying out the tools.

The front of the storefront will be built out like a 19th-century store. We’re building a platform at window height that will fill the enormous window bay that faces Madison Avenue. On top of that platform we will have two large stair-step risers (4’ wide x 3’ tall) that will allow us to display our books, tools and apparel to passers-by. Between the two risers, we’ll have space to show off a project. The risers and platform are all mobile, so we can easily rearrange things for a holiday display (get your elf hat on, Megan).

We are still working out where to display the blemished books and tools. That will come after we get the other fixtures in.

Offices

On the second floor we are building our offices and tool-assembly area. The walls of the front third of the building have been scrubbed to remove the old dirt and grease. The fireproof drywall (at the county’s order) has been mudded, sanded and primed. We have a heat pump system installed on the second floor. We just need a little paint, a little electrical and some yellow-pine flooring installed over the original old flooring (which is too delicate for us to use, but we are preserving it).

What About Willard Street?

As most of you know, Lucy and I live above the shop at Willard Street, so this will reduce the hustle and bustle below for us. The first floor will remain exactly as it is now – except for the fact there will be no retail sales there. 

The bench room will remain the same and be used for classes. The mechanical library will be intact. And the kitchen and biergarten will remain the same for students and our employees to enjoy.

The machine room won’t change at all. All the machines are mine personally, anyway. So there’s no plan to move those.

Megan, Kale and I will work at both locations, depending on the day. I’m sure we’ll find a rhythm eventually.

And Then…

There is still tons of stuff to do at Anthe. We need to restore the exterior and make storm windows for the third-floor windows. And eventually we will have a break room on the third floor (or maybe the second floor) for employees. 

But this is real progress.