Take a seat while you wait...Coffee Shop Snippets #2

Waiting, waiting....that's all we seem to do! Well obviously we don't just sit around and wait, there have been other things to do, small things that will all form part of the bigger plan, but on the whole it feels like there has been a lot of waiting!
First we had to wait to see if we would be granted A3 usage for the shop, then we had to wait for the leases and legal work to be sorted, then we had to wait for building regulations to be approved, THEN we had to wait for the builders to return their quotes to us, some of which we are still waiting on, over two weeks later! and breathe.....................


To add to this I have also had to wait for my engagement ring to be re-set, but I'm delighted to say we got the call to say it's in the shop ready to be collected.

One of the things we did while waiting was source chairs for the shop. When you search on-line for coffee shop chairs or cafe chairs, most of the ones that come up are ultra modern, metal, or flimsy looking and wouldn't fit in with the look or feel we're trying create at the shop. We started to search on second-hand  sites like Ebay and secondhand-chairs-and-tables.co.uk and found a few possible selections. In the end we bought a couple of chairs off of Ebay and while searching I came across one Ebay shop that had a 'real' shop so we went along for a look and came away with twelve chairs! This was on a day when we'd collected two other chairs purchased via Ebay so Mr P somehow managed to squeeze fourteen chairs into the back of our car! All in all we ended up with about twenty chairs in various shapes, sizes and colours.

The plan is to renovate all of these chairs, not so much to make them match, but to make them coordinate.  I've been sanding them down and giving them a couple of coats of undercoat, sanding some more and then finishing them with Craig & Rose paints. I've done three chairs so far and as far as I can tell they are the three oldest I'm guessing 1930's - 1950's. 

One of a pair  

Finished with it's original seat pad in place

My Favourite little chair that cost just £5!

So with many more things to source and lots more chairs to paint I have plenty to keep me busy. Mr P has now started work in the shop, alongside builders, plumbers and electricians. There is an awful lot to do before we can open, but I'm confident we have the right people in place to do the work and hopefully soon we'll have a clearer idea of an opening date.