Catching up

At this point I should probably just give up on blogging, but I'm yet again determined to be a good blogger- even this most recent 4 month long dry spell considering. Here it goes again. . .

I do have to add that I have a pretty good excuse for the absence. Late this past summer my life changed dramatically. I have been running my photography business out of my home for the past 3 years but a few months ago that all changed. I am now in the throws of opening up a cute little storefront space on Union Street in Cow Hollow. It is so very exciting and so very scary. Here's how it happened:

In mid July, Julie invited me to this bbq for a whole bunch of photographers. I really shouldn't have been invited to this seeing as how it was for DWF photographers and while I'm a member, I've never ever participated, but as fate would have it- I went along anyway, and that's where I met Lena and Maria. It's kind of a complicated string of events that happened next but within 10 days of meeting them, I had decided, with the help of Lena's encouragement, to open a studio with Maria. Within 2 weeks I was scouting out places and withing 2 and a half weeks we had found one- the most perfect one. Barely 2 weeks later I was signing the next 3 years of my life away to this place with complete trust in someone I'd known for a month! Crazy!

So in the 3 months since then we have been hard at work getting it ready. We've done a huge demo job and things have taken twice as long and cost twice as much as we anticipated but it's starting to get to a point where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel (if we squint really hard). I'll try to get some pictures of it's current state up here soon, but for now here are the before ones-- you can see a whole bunch by clicking here, but these are the highlights:

The front of the building- it's called The Carriage House. I think there's some history there but I don't yet know it. Anyway, we are on the bottom floor and the patio is ours to do what we want with. Our landlords, the Castalucci Family will be running their business from the second floor and the 3rd floor (not pictured) is an assortment of counseling offices.
Walking down to our entryway
From the front door looking in to the left. This space was most recently a chiropractor's office so that wall right in front of you when you walk in is where the receptionist sat behind.
A few steps further in looking back
From the front left looking back (this picture allows you to see 3 different types of flooring- there's still 3 more in the back- so weird)
Inside the reception area
The back room. We learned that the chiropractor rented this little room in the back out to a massage therapist.
The bathroom
From the back left of the main area looking at the right side. So the bathroom is on the right off that hallway and that room with the closed door was his x-ray room- walls filled with lead make for tough demo. Then on the left is the entry to that back room.
So shortly after those pictures were taken at the very end of August, we started tearing it all apart, and by "we" I mean Tutt. Maria's husband has been a rockstar. While Shawn and I would occasionally show up to make our consciouses feel like we were doing something to help, it was really Tutt who did pretty much everything. He was there by himself through pretty much all of September. By the time October rolled around we started to get a little stressed about how much more involved this project was than we had originally expected, but luckily Shawn has an Uncle Roger who came to the rescue.
Roger flew all the way out here from Idaho to help us do the mudding and taping on all the drywall. He was supposed to stay 3 days but he extended his trip to a week and stayed to help us finish- it was seriously such an amazing gesture and we will be forever grateful to him for that.
This pic reminds me of an interesting bit of info- Maria now carries a tape measure in her purse at all times.
There tended to be a lot of this sort of feeling- What the *#!? This place is just so old- it's filled with all sorts of quandaries.
Shawn (ie: just a regular ol' handyman)
So that is what's been going on. We are finally now to the point where we can begin working on making it our little boutique space. While this is where we were hoping to be 2 months ago, we're here now and happy about that. I'm sure someday we'll look back and laugh at all of this craziness and think fondly upon those late nights at the freezing cold space, walking around covered in drywall dust, paint and glue for several months in a row while everyone else in our neighborhood looked like a walking billboard for Abercrombie, bad Pasta Pomodoro, misfitting pieces of wood, poorly cut plaster, that stone floor that just couldn't be covered up, Tutt being electrocuted, and so on and so on- but for now it's still a little too recent and I think we're ready to be done with all of that.
Anyway, I'll post some pictures of it's current state soon. One final one for now:
Tutt not only builds photography boutiques, but protective shields as well!