Some Things Just Belong Together 🤝
If you've been a Fuzzy Fan for a bit you'll know that our home is a 100+ year old building that needed a lot of 💗 and we were glad to give it ❣️ A little before and after pic here
But the story now is our cabinets. The only thing I loved doing almost as much as opening the store was looking for all of the furnishings. Before I was committed to the building I had the thought of a mid-century, Wes Anderson Moonrise Kingdom vibe. But our building wanted a more rustic mood and so I was on the hunt a'la American Pickers. I'll confess I took some longer lunches from my job than I should have to run by another vintage shop. The biggest challenge was what was I going to put the yarn in? All the fixtures I could imagine were too modern for the building. And one day I found our yarn cabinets on a Saturday jaunt to "Second Hand Sally's" outside of Tallahassee. I loved how they had a counter to pull yarn out and "interview" them for your projects. One cabinet was buried in back of a booth and it was fate that I even saw it. The owner said she had 3 more out back (only kinda covered from the elements, and actually one was unsalvagable). They were orginally built for a hardware store in a smaller Southern town. I loved that they had a really useful life and we were adding new chapters.
I was lucky to work with a local retail designer who sought us out and works with all the cute shops in town. Jackie convinced me to paint the shelves, and do it in a neutral color, as the yarn was the star of the show. It was hard to not choose a fun bright color, but she was right! Let the yarn shine 🌈.
Think back to 2014 when we opened, distressed finishing was a thing and so we painted the shelves the perfect gray, the color of the brick grout, and then sanded them a bit, as they were already clearly not-new.
Well now that distressing is not a thing, our cabinets needed a freshening. I tried to talk myself out of the whole project, but you know that once you see that smudge or wonky place you can't unsee it? This was going to be a project. Should I just start over with new cabinets? I decided these old hardware cabinets and Fuzzy Goat were on this journey together. It would mean dividing the project into 2 sets, having Daryl's crew move the cabinets out so we didn't have paint in the shop, Danny doing his painting magic with a semi-gloss, and then doing it all with the 2nd set. And it all came together last week! What I thought would be such a gut-wrenching project was drama-free!
I love having not only the yarn and bags under our guidance until we send them to you, but also this old building and furnishings.
A few other pieces to ❣️ are our old mail sorter as our needle sorter, gas station oil-can shelving as our bookcase, beer garden tables as our class tables, beat-up auto SERVICE sign, 100-year-old mercantile table and counter. One final story is about our counter: a year after we opened a woman came in and said our check-out counter was supposed to be her kitchen island, she planned the whole kitchen around it and I bought it out from under her. I had no idea and she's right, it would have made a great island! The moral of the story is - when you see a piece you love Pop On It! (Kinda applies to that perfect skein of yarn too 🧶😉)
