The final countdown

It's been another hectic few weeks, but we're nearly there!

The main reason we haven't been able to open yet is that we're still waiting for our planning permission to be granted by the council, but the less said about that the better...

In the meantime, we're just putting the final touches to the shop.



Starting to look less like a bombsite, huh?

We did our first firing, which was frankly terrifying - watching the kiln climb up to 1000 degrees. But amazingly, it's so quiet and barely makes more heat on the outside than a small radiator.

We certainly learnt some lessons with our first firing, particularly with the dipping glaze part, where we got it slightly too thick in some places, but a couple of you-tube videos later and having diluted the glaze a bit further, we tried another round of dipping and firing and things came out beautifully.

The Disney shelf is looking a lot more colourful these days anyway!



More fun was had this week when we had a session of baby footprint painting practice, with a friend from school and her gorgeous tot.



Hopefully the first of many sessions to come!

Not just shelves

Yes, we finally have shelves!



This might not seem particularly exciting to the outside world, but it means that we can finally get some of that stock out of boxes and up on display. Then come the difficult decisions...for example, Disney princesses with the girly stuff, or the Disney stuff? It's a hard life.




We also have our sign up. This makes things start to feel very real indeed. We need to find a matching shade of outdoor paint to cover up the knackered existing turquoise paintwork soon.



You might have noticed I missed doing my usual update last weekend. That's because it was super-hectic, in a good way. We invited some friends round to do a test run - trying out the paints, brushes, bisque etc. I'm so glad we did it, not only because it was great fun, but it really helped us see what we needed to provide, particularly in terms of wet-wipes, aprons and such.

It was fantastic to see how much the kids (and possibly the grown-ups too!) enjoyed choosing and painting the pieces, and we're really grateful to them all for coming along.




What's left to do then? What's not left to do! Create a website, put more shelves up, put together a window display, deal with a mountain of paperwork, fix the tablecloths to the tables, relocate the coffee machine...well, if I go on any more, I'll start to feel dizzy.


Not to mention painting up about 40 more samples.

We are still waiting to hear whether we've been granted planning permission for our change of use on the property (apparently there are 'quite a few applications ahead of us in the queue'), which considering how much we have yet to do, isn't the biggest disaster in the world!  And the good news is that I finished up in my 9-5 job on Friday, and am looking forward to dedicating myself to the shop full-time.


Yay!

Exciting progress

Lots of exciting things have happened in the last week.

Firstly, we took delivery of our first big order from one of the suppliers we're using for bisque and other equipment. Not only does this mean that we now have a stonking great kiln in the back of the shop:

(Check out that control panel! The manual is about the size of the Yellow Pages...)
 But we've also been able to start painting up samples for the shop! Here's a sample of our handiwork - we've started with the kids stuff which is basically like fun colouring-in, and are just moving on to decorating bowls, plates and mugs having got used to the techniques, which brushes to use, etc. You'll notice the colours look very pale and dull - this is part of the fun of ceramics painting, as when glazed and fired they'll be transformed to bright, glossy colours.

(Yes, poor Snow White does look a little goggle-eyed... I still need a little practice doing eyes!)

The shop itself is a hive of chaos activity at the moment.


The sign arrived this week, and just needs to be installed on the shop-front - quite a tricky job which may well test K's fear of heights!

Enormous, isn't it?

The walls are now painted, with a lovely purple colour in the front window area and back section:


And, possibly (sadly) the most exciting thing to me, we got our tablecloths - polkadot vinyl, to bring a another splash of colour to the place.

Now I just have to work out a way of taping them to the tables...

Aaand finally, the holding page is up on our website! We still need to do the proper site, but it's great to have something, anything there. You can find it at www.seashoreceramics.co.uk, but it's pretty hard to find through a google search at the moment as I haven't done any of the techie stuff which needs doing behind the scenes yet.

I think that's quite enough for one week... We should hear by the 26th if our planning permission has gone though, so keep your fingers crossed for that, and with any luck we should be able to open in April. Time to start recruiting some customers!

Flatpack fest

It feels like a lot has changed in the shop in just a week.

The walls are almost painted, and the new flooring is down - the whole place looks so much brighter and cleaner! (OK, so it wouldn't have been hard, but still...)

K and his brother have been working hard: laying lino, painting walls and building a wall at the back of the room for the kiln to hide behind.


Or me!

We also took delivery of our tables and chairs, which arrived in such a number of boxes that the delivery man actually called me up to check I hadn't mistakenly added an extra nought onto my order.

NB: the following pictures may only be exciting to other similarly disturbed types like me who love putting flat-pack up...

Oooh, boxes!

Mmm, pieces o' pine!

Instructions read in full, pieces categorised, and armed with my tiny allen key, the fun commenced. Before long we had our first table and chairs.


The great thing about having done this is that we've been able confirm how many tables will fit in the shop. Having previously worried that we might not even fit eight tables in, it looks as if they'll fit comfortably - with possibly room for even more.



The To-Do list is still as long as both my arms (and one of my legs) put together, but with the help of a lick of paint and a little furniture, it must be said that it really feels like the shop is starting to come together!

Half a small forest

We just placed a whopping order for our shop furniture. After much to-ing and fro-ing, humming and hawing and running down every furniture supplier the internet had to offer, we went with a very plain set of tables and chairs from Homebase...

(photo brazenly swiped from their website)

...ten of them. Yes, ten. These pine babies will arrive unassembled, so I'm anticipating an orgy of flat-pack this weekend - which is good, because I have an unhealthy love of putting this stuff together. (If the business ever falls through, I am available for hire for all your flat-pack needs!)

They fall into the 'sturdy and inoffensive' category, which is what we wanted given that the main focus of the shop is to be the products themselves. Initially we'll probably only have space for eight, but wanted to get two extra in case we expand in future, and it'll be good to have the back-up of extra chairs in case things get busy.

The process of ordering them online was strangely stressful - whilst I know why the anti-fraud measures many banks have introduced in the last few years need to be there, they now mean I dread placing any orders over the internet, particularly large and costly ones using soon-to-expire discount codes. There's something mindblowingly frustrating about being at the mercy of a tiny little text box on a small glowing screen.

Meanwhile, K is making progress getting our signage sorted out, and we're moving closer to being able to place our first big stock order. There are so many things we need, and a couple of very competitive suppliers, which makes the whole process pretty complicated. Lucky then that my talents don't stop at furniture assembly, but extend to writing complex price comparison spreadsheets....

Progress

Disclaimer: this post contains excessive DIY content and wallpaper facts.

Much progress was made this weekend chez Seashore Ceramics.

Firstly, the old gloomy carpet has gone. Amazingly, we posted it on Freecycle and within minutes had a number of takers - it was great to see it taken away by someone who could make use of it (and for us not to have to do twelvety trips to the tip!) The improvement was instant - from this:


To this:


Next step was covering up the 70s faux wood panelling, which we're doing by putting some lining paper and then painting over that. Fact: 1000-weight lining paper does the job much, much better than 800-weight.

Here I am, pasting away merrily (in, yes, the same demented clothes as last weekend)


You might notice my slightly unusual pasting table - it's a very retro counter which was left in this shop, which we're planning to use as our till counter.


Between the carpet removal and the new, clean walls, it feels like a different shop already.


Next up: laying the new flooring, putting a wall in, and placing our first stock order!

The shop

After what felt like months of searching, we finally found a shop which felt like it ticked all the boxes for our little Pottery Painting Studio. Here it is - as you can see, it needs a little TLC.

After brief contract negotiations (very grown-up!), we got access last week and set to sprucing the place up.

The existing decor is an ...interesting mix of pub carpet, hanging basket brackets, and thick textured wallpaper painted roughly the colour of processed cheese.
For the strong of stomach, here's what came off the walls:

Tip: if you need to strip a considerable square-footage of vinyl wall-cladding, make like Freddy Kruger and slash it to bits. This is (a) a great stress-reliever and (b) allows the hot water to sink in and oh-so-helpfully dissolve the lower layers, meaning it can be satisfyingly peeled off, like PVA glue from the back of a hand. Why yes, I did pay attention in art class, what do you mean?
Two days of this:

(I'm blurry because I'm moving so fast, OK?)
And this:

and we'd managed to take it down to the super-retro original faux wood panelling.
The pups helped. Well, if by 'helped', you mean 'play fought, lolled around, attempted to eat pieces of wallpaper'.

(They were only peeved because they can smell the beach from the shop, and boy do they LOVE the beach.)
Next stop: learn to wallpaper, with the help of the internet. Should be easy enough, right?