Soon our storefront will be open at 407 Madison Ave.
Our new storefront was supposed to be open by Jan. 1, but it’s still not done because we are waiting on the cabinetry that was supposed to arrive before Christmas.
We are not gritching. Delays happen. But until we can get the new storefront at 407 Madison Ave. up and running, we have to suspend in-person retail sales. Here’s why.
Megan broke her ankle and is laid up at home for a bit. And right now we are moving operations to 407 Madison Ave. (the “Anthe” building, pronounced ANN-thee). So Kale and I are running back and forth between the workshop at Willard Street and Anthe. And we are not reliably in any one place right now.
Today our cabinetry vendor promised that our order would be loaded on a truck on Monday or Tuesday. If that happens, we will get the new storefront up and running by the end of the month. But until then, our in-person retail operation is on hold.
Apologies for this. And I hope we will have some good news soon.
We spent the last couple months of 2024 working hard on our building at 407 Madison Ave., an old woodworking tool factory that we are restoring as our fulfillment center, retail store and editorial offices.
In addition to the staff and sub-contractors, we brought in Zach Haynes of Haynes Carpentry to help do some of the difficult and detailed work. Zach finished up the drywall, helped get the offices separated from tool assembly and did a lot of work getting the storefront ready. Thanks Zach!
On Tuesday, I did this quick video tour of the building. Lots more work ahead this month. Our cabinets should arrive for the storefront (there’s no way I could build these in time or for the price we’re being charged). And work has already begun on fixing up the old factory bathroom on the second floor.
Right now, I can’t even show you a photo of the bathroom because I think it would break some laws it’s so scary.
Our fulfillment center and storefront will be closed from Dec. 24 to Jan. 1. So any online orders placed during that time will not ship until we return from the break.
So if you want a book or tool shipped out before the end of the year, please place your order before Dec. 23.
The coming year will be filled with new projects and products: our new storefront will open at 407 Madison Ave. in Covington, we have at least four new books and a new video in the works and we will launch our apparel line, Joyner.
With that mountain of work ahead, John and I decided we should all take a break before plunging into 2025.
The exterior of our storefront needs work. But that’s for another day.
It’s been a while since I wrote about our work on the Anthe Building, the old factory where our fulfillment center is located. This fall we’ve been working on the storefront of the building, which faces Madison Avenue in downtown Covington. And on some offices upstairs for the editorial staff. Here’s the latest.
The Storefront
This will be operational by the end of the year. The entire facade of the Anthe Building is one of the last remaining completely original storefronts in Covington. So every repair here is aimed at conservation of the original materials and altering as little as possible.
The plate-glass windows are trimmed in ornamental steel and were originally painted a bright green. We’ve removed some of the old paint on the trim and will repaint it in the original color. Likewise, all the woodwork surrounding the windows and doors is original. Some of it is in rough shape, but we will keep it all. But that’s a project for later. Most of the work has been to the interior space.
The beginnings of the storefront interior.
We have tidied up the original pine floors – removing some mastic left from some late 20th-century flooring – and adding some varnish to preserve them. The back wall of the storefront and its gallery are now complete and await some final painting.
We’ve moved the storefront’s main bookcase into the storefront, hung a cork board to display apparel and not much else. This month I’ll build some freestanding displays for books and other fun window displays. The goal is to look like a 19th-century storefront, because that’s what it is.
The second-floor offices under construction.
Offices
Upstairs, we’ve carved out 370 square feet for offices, with another 200 square feet for tool assembly. The area was drywalled during the first phase of the project, so we’ve been trying to make it habitable. That meant adding a heat pump system for the second floor, plus a nice floor (the original floor is too worn out to use, so we preserved it under felt and OSB). Our offices have yellow-pine floors to match the rest of the building.
We should move some desks in there by the end of the week. And we’ll be working there every day by the end of the year.
What Does This Mean for You?
Our Willard Street storefront, which is below our living quarters, will remain basically unchanged. We’ll use it for classes, furniture construction and photography. But it won’t be home base anymore.
All retail sales will move to the nearby Anthe Building at 407 Madison Ave. The good news is we will have regular storefront hours for people to visit – 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. The bad news is we won’t be open for weekends just yet. We don’t yet have the staff to cover those shifts.
When we embarked on this project, we held a fundraiser where we sold special products (classes, hammers, books) with the proceeds going to building repairs. We also had plans for an opening day party for everyone who contributed. We keep putting that party off because Anthe is still an active construction zone.
I can’t say exactly when we might have the party. But we will have it. Maybe February 2025.
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.
