Coffee Shop Snippets #8 Leaps & Bounds

It's been about two weeks since I gave you a sneaky peek inside and so much has happened! We've gone from bare plastered walls and concrete floors, to painted walls and ceilings and wooden flooring. We now have lighting in too. We've gone for a mixture of low voltage down lighters and some bigger lights that have a daylight effect so we can switch around what we use depending on the natural light coming in from outside.

I got hands on and did some of the painting, including the old fireplace we managed to keep. It's now had a lovely coat of black enamel and looks loved again!

Tables have been purchased and the tops are being sanded and stained to match the floors and counters. I'm pleased to say we managed to get recycled ones along with some recycled Bar chairs, for the breakfast bar and had them re-upholstered. We're quite proud of the fact that all of the furniture in the shop is recycled or reclaimed.

We've had a fair few deliveries over the past couple of weeks, ranging from small not very exciting items to our gorgeous patisserie cabinet and ice cream freezer and we've also managed to get a supply of some premium soft drinks. Not only are they great quality, but they're produced in the North (North East so not quite local but still produced closer to home than most soft drinks) but they are coming from a small local independent supplier no more than a mile or two away from the shop.

The phone line is now in, but I won't give you the number as we don't yet have a phone!

So I'll leave you with the pictures. if you have time go back over some of the old snippets and see the difference, I have to, just to remember what it looked like to start with!

From back to front. Clean lines and straight edges with a widened arch

This arch has also been made wider to allow more light and space 

View from the other side, Front to Back

Counter taking shape........

Looking good! I'm so happy with how it looks Mr P has done an amazing job so far!

Click on the 'snippets' label below if you'd like to see the older pictures, I'm off to take a look now :o)

Cake of the week - Lauren's Birthday Cake

Once again I have the opportunity to join in with Helen's Cake Of The Week link on her fabulous blog CasaCostello I linked up a couple of weeks ago for Megan's Birthday where I not only made my first fully iced birthday cake, but a two tier one at that!
Thankfully Lauren's request was simpler, a chocolate cake with blue feathers on! So that's what she got!

As usual I left it until very late on the night before her birthday to decorate it and didn't really have an idea of how I was going to decorate it until I started. It's fair to say it was less than perfect. The chocolate icing didn't behave quite like the white I'd used for Megan's cake and it wasn't nearly as forgiving, hence the double ribbon round the sides.
Lauren had chosen the feathers so I popped those on, along with her candles and her name but it looked far too plain. I decided on butterflies with a couple of little flowers and it just kind of grew from there.

Helen made some lovely comments on my last cake, but this one has confirmed to me that iced cakes are not my strong point!! Maybe on day in the future when I have more time (who am I kidding, right??!!) I'll learn the art of decorating celebration cakes, until then they'll be for the children only and I'll concentrate on cakes for the shop!

But most importantly the Birthday girl loved it! Happy 11th Birthday Lauren! xxx

Pop over to see Helen's last wedding cake for a while, talk about go out with a bang! It's amazing!

Coffee Shop Snippets #7 - We're plastered!

Things have been slow going, but that's because there was major work to be done. On Friday the plasterers came and spent two days skimming the walls and ceilings. We used local tradesmen again, so local one walked to the shop and the other came on a push bike. I have to say they've done a fantastic job and I think from here on in, things are going to pick up pace.

Enjoy the pictures and thanks for stopping by :o)

Stairs are Blocked in again

Wall gone & light floods in

I love our windows

Opening widened allowing more space & light

From the back to the front

Reinstated side door giving an extra fire escape

View from the back wall to the door

Original fireplace we managed to save