Rusty Monkey...a slooooowwwww reveal.....

As I've mentioned before, a couple friends and I are beginning a new adventure called
Rusty Monkey Vintage Marketplace and Workshop.

The primary location used to be a muffler and automotive repair shop. Fortunately, it doesn't have ANY smells of its previous tenants...oily or petroleum stink. If you've ever been in an unkempt automotive shop, you know exactly the smell I'm talking about.

So, the re-do has been fairly easy to accomplish. Ginger and I have spent her last two days off (not connected days) busy at work.

First, we decided to remove an interior window that had been drywalled up to open up the rooms. It worked!

I poked a few nail holes from the backside wall to mark the space on the front (the front was well textured and had no signs of a patch - the back side wasn't so nice and the shoddy tape lines were easy to follow).

We cut and removed the drywall. Fun, but messy. Drywall dust is so..um...dusty!

Next up was the back wall in the little room you could now see through the "window".

Enter the huge, old dictionary I had found a couple years ago for $2.00. Remove the duct tape that was holding the binding together. Unscrew the big ol' barrel bolts. Cut off the 3-hole margins. Ready to apply to the wall using good ol' liquid starch.

Many hours and 10, no, 20 sticky, gooey fingers later, the wall was covered. It looks kind of funny in photos, due to the random-ness of the margins (narrow and wide), but it looks REALLY cool in person. It will be clear-coated to seal and possibly even get a glazing treatment...we'll see.

The window opening got a good squaring up and trimmed out. We still need to fill the brad nail holes and paint, but I think we are on the home stretch!

We've re-painted the gray 1/2 walls with plans to put up chair rail at the existing lines.

However, the three window walls have windows that are not at the same lower plane. So, we decided to raise all the moulding and will add more Natural Linen paint to the bottom-most part of the chair rail.

A couple weekends ago, Janice and I went to the Jacksonville city-wide yard sale...OH, WHAT FUN THAT WAS...(another post!). I found a vintage canvas tape measure for $1.00. Yep, $1.00!!! Funny thing is it's METRIC! The foot marks are spot-on, but it doesn't have 12 marks in between - only 10. Well, I had the bright idea of using it to embellish the moulding. So with a bit of double stick tape and a few little black brad nails my idea came to fruition. Fun. Easy. Cool!

The rusty orange wall will also get a mocha glaze and this queen-size box spring frame will go up. Our sign, a rusty piece of corrugated metal (the match to my Home Is...sign) will be layered on top of it. Stay tuned....

We've still got a ways to go, but I'm gonna take my recent fortune to heart!