As furniture restorers, we all have our unique reasons why we do it.  For me, it’s always been therapeutic to restore and revive the broken, tired or worn.  Along the way, our house became overcrowded with furniture projects; the basement workshop spilled over into the unheated garage, the kitchen, the family room…some of you reading this understand all too well what I’m describing.  Strangers were randomly coming into our home to pick up refinished furniture, the snowblower was being squeezed for garage space and the car hadn’t been in there for over a year.  It was time for us to cease this therapeutic hobby or find more space.

Hey, look – what’s that?  Is that a storefront for lease down the street from our overflowing garage?

It was far from pretty, but for some reason, we saw “potential”.  Turns out it would be Months and Months of dusty, sweaty “potential”.

Local folks will likely recall the Shoe Repair shop that occupied this space for the past 60+ years.  Well, it hadn’t been updated since before that time!  There was a single working electrical outlet for the entire space with several frayed cloth extension cords criss-crossing the sagging floor. The heater…well, you can see the large natural gas-fired monstrosity hanging down from the ceiling.  Yikes!  Leaking pipes, absent ceiling, broken glass….such a charming space!

 

I’m not sure if we were impatient or suckers, but once the HVAC was installed, we took over renovations from the contractors so we could speed it along.  We completed electrical, lighting, leveling floors, installing flooring, painting, and lots of other random tasks to get this place in shape to even start selling paint and furniture.

Let the Cleaning Begin!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Along the way, I found this awesome piece at ReHouse Architectural Salvage for our FUSION Paint Display.  Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t ideal and it was delivered prior to completing the floors.  Oops.

Oh well, at least I didn’t worry about splashing paint on the floor when I painted it FUSION’s Inglenook!

Once semi-leveled, the flooring installation went relatively quickly.  The lights went up and things started looking like they were coming together!

Next…The exterior signage!

For anyone who has ever dealt with making changes to the exterior of an Historic building (AKA adding external signage)…you feel our pain.  Enough said.

Of Course we were making the sign ourselves, in the shop, during renovations!  That’s how we do things!

As soon as we started filling in display cabinets, anchor pieces and shelving, it started looking like a real shop!!!!  The rest of the photos can tell that story better than I.

 

 

 

 

So, when folks ask how long our store has been here…it’s complicated.  The entire time we worked on it, we sold FUSION paint to existing customers and anyone else looking for it with the “pardon our dust” caveat.  However, we are coming up on one year since our official opening, so it seemed like a good time to review where we have been with this location in the past couple of years!

One last thing…

Did I mention that during the course of renting, renovating and moving into this space, we also purchased a separate building in another county for our workshop?  Yeah, that needed work too, so we split our time between working on this and that….but that is for another blog post!

All of the products we use to refinish furniture are available at our shops, Vintage Matters at 7060 Ridge Road Sodus, NY and Lakeside Restoration 1476 Monroe Ave Rochester, NY  – or order through our online store at https://lakeside-restoration.myshopify.com/

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