A Little Before...

The main room of the Rusty Monkey Vintage Marketplace and Workshop.

We've begun the painting. Bye Bye gray 1/2 walls. They are now a nice and clean Natural Linen color.
The top section will remain white. The black trim, which we are NOT inclined to re-paint using 14 coats of white paint, will remain black and receive just a bit of distressing with our trusty sanding block. The "chair rail" will clean up the white and cream separation lines.

The focal wall (behind us) has been base coated in rust, but since the floors won't be stained, the focal wall will. A little bit of added gray will tie it in with the gray, for now....

The original plan was to pull up the gray office carpet and stain the concrete all sorts of beautiful rustic colors. Well, the best laid plans....

Under that carpet is a wonderful layer of office tile...glued down with a vengeance...SO, the gray office carpet will get professionally steamed clean on Tuesday, and will remain in place for the first few months, because we just practiced pulling up a load of glued-down office carpet and scraped up glued-down tiles in our Coca-Cola building last year...until our fingers bled, our backs ached, and our knees were about to fall off....SO, I'm not in any hurry to give up valuable creative time to make my body ache...I have a completely DIY attitude, but I'm trying to look at the big picture right now....Besides, the more I think about it, the more I think I'd like to pull up the carpet and lay down wonderfully aged wood planks...like those in an old general store...hmmmm....

The steel and wood rack you see through the doorway will be moved and with a bunch of shoe-box totes added it will be an awesome place to store all sorts of bits and bobs for creating. YAY!

This is out in the bay. This will be the heart of the workshop. The blue 1/2 walls are now painted the same rust color as the focal wall. It completely changed the look in here. I love it!!!

This area will also serve as the sales floor for the "big" items...furniture, garden, home decor, etc...

We'll be adding a false ceiling, but not a drop ceiling, like in the entry room photo above...I don't like drop ceilings, but at least it's clean and basic for now. Less $$ that has to be spent in there...

I hope to add open, wood trusses up there and cap them with rusty, old corrugated metal (see my Home Is sign a few posts down). With the open space strung with the clear twinkling lights...OH YEAH!!! That will definitely set the tone.

Here is the rest of the bay....moving to the left...Phillip claimed the workbench. I claimed the steel and wood rack in the "little" room. It will be moved out here and get a coat of paint.

The "little" room will become our feature room....Holiday, Baby, Kitchen, etc... I'm in search of a little chandelier for the ceiling in there. Two of the walls are going to be covered with some liquid starch and the pages of a HUGE dictionary I bought, just for the cause....actually I bought it two years ago...but, just goes to show, if you have an idea and you find the supplies, buy them....a time and a place will arrive someday.... :-)

I'll keep posting the in-progresses....and mark your calendars...November will be here soon.....

Cheers!