Oof, tired! Glad Berwyn Shops offers a couple of coffee places; got a lovely caramel latte from Gricelda, and I think that’ll carry me through until 6.
Yesterday was a little harried. I’d planned to paint and stencil the floor of my shed-store, and had bought paint and a stencil for that purpose. It would’ve been very pretty. Kevin came down to the store with me and helped me shift everything out, preparatory to painting, then biked home to get Anand dinner and help him with math homework — Kavi was having dinner with friends.
But just when I was starting to tape, one of the other vendors (who was there loading some more items into her shop) came by to say hi, and told me that we weren’t actually allowed to paint.
Eep. I wasn’t sure whether I’d missed an instruction, or whether they’d forgotten to tell me — most of the vendors here are for the full season, which they run May – December. I was only offered a spot because someone left and a shed opened up. So my intro to all this is a bit abbreviated, so it’s not surprising something slipped through the cracks.
I was pretty frustrated at that moment, because the concrete shed floor was honestly pretty grotty-looking, but the other vendor kindly told me that several of the vendors had chosen to put down removable vinyl flooring from Menard’s. I’d never done anything like that, but she swore it was easy. So what the heck — at 6:30, instead of painting, I headed over to Menard’s.
It took a little over an hour to drive over, find the vinyl flooring, choose one, have them cut and wrap it for me, and drive back. So it was past 7:30 when I called Kevin and asked him to bike back down (it’s about 2 miles) to help me get the flooring out of the car (I might’ve been able to do it, but my wrist makes lifting heavy things particularly difficult right now), lay it out, cut out the excess, and then move all the furniture back in.
In the end, I actually love the look of the vinyl flooring, and I think it only took about 20 minutes to install — basically roll it out, and cut the excess strips off two sides. It was an expense I hadn’t planned for ($150 for enough vinyl for an 11×14 shed), but I think not a bad one in the end — and certainly a lot less work than painting would be.
I was pretty exhausted after all the hauling, so came home — yesterday was an intense day, with store prep, teaching prep, teaching, and then more store prep — I was running pretty much from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. And then I ended up stressing to Kevin for a while about the launch; I think I was just feeling overwhelmed and out of my depth. I ended up having a lot of trouble sleeping — I didn’t really get to sleep until sometime after 1 a.m., and then up at 7 again to get the kids off to school.
So, tired! And there’s quite a bit I’d still like to do to finish set-up — among other things, I need to do a LOT of pricing. But the other vendors have been super-complimentary about my space, which is very kind of them, and I’ve sold four items so far (Fridays are slow, unsurprisingly — hopefully the weekend will pick up!).
My coffee buzz is starting to fade now, so I may need to supplement with sugar — the other coffee place offers fresh churros. 🙂 Onwards.
