Work goes on and on...

It's June 3rd now and we have the whole floor tile installed so far. I have all my stain glass panels down too. All we have to do is grout it all with the concrete. It's taking forever, mainly due to the fact that we bring our small children to work with us. Now that my school is over and Nikita's homeschool is over, I"m hoping to go faster and open up soon. I'm beginning to panic as my funds run out....

But the floor is going to look spectacular when it's finished!

I had the old picket fence re installed in the front yard and am planning on painting it white. I had bark spread out all over the ground, which smells lovely and makes it look a lot better.

Oh! And I hate the outside shade of yellow... It makes me want to eat eggs. blech! That will need to be redone asap!

I painted the children's side taupe (for fingerprints) and the outdoor facade pink with white trim (and all that gingerbread), that will be her little business, "Swan Lake Bakery", which is just a glorified lemonade stand. The little ones eat alot, ya know!!

Clean Up Begins, ugh!!

They say, "Be careful what you wish for!" and they might have been thinking about this project.

The concrete skim coat somebody had put down on the floor was peeling up in places and was going to have to be completely removed. A raccoon had become trapped inside the cottage at some point and as he explored ways to get out, had dragged black ashes from the fireplace all over the entire interior. It was spider heaven! And it had become a storage unit for all the neighboring tenants and the owner too. There was no toilet and the electricity was scary. Outside, the ivy had taken over and was growing inside the roof .

The 'To-Do' List just kept growing and growing...

So, what's the fastest, cheapest way to make a place look better? Paint, that's right!
I had found inspiration when surfing the web for ideas for a little playhouse for my daughter, Nikita. I loved the color combinations and decided to use it in the shop.

With the help of my amazing friend Erin, we painted the place, inside and out. Then we started on removing the old floor. I already knew the floor that I wanted to install - a tile floor with 2 1/2" grout that I embedd with stain glass remnants and glass bubbles. I would also create sea inspired motifs as tile insets.

In the bathroom, I was given some old turquiose broken tiles and made a mosaic floor with a turtle inset and bubbles in the grout.

In The Beginning

Well, let me start out by saying that Dreams Really Do Come True!

Twice a week, we pass an old, abandoned cottage in downtown Morro Bay on the way to my daughter Nikita's ballet class. It is tucked away under a huge pine tree and the gray, faded paint blended in so well with the shadows that it was easy to miss. But once you see it, you never forget it, or so it was with me. Several times I stopped by and peeked into the pane glass windows to see a sad, abandoned shop filled with junk, peeling floors and blackened walls. But the architecture was great and the remnants of the gingerbread trim that I could see through the windows were enough to make me fall in love instantly with its potential.

At ballet one afternoon, I told the other mom's about the cottage, when one of them said, "That's my father-in-law's place!". Serendipity, for sure...

One thing led to another. doors miraculously swung open, hurdles disappeared into thin air and the cottage has become my newest project as of April 15,2010. My goal is to bring it back to life as best as I can. It's going to take an awful lot of work. I have very limited funds. I am using my college loans, investing them as it were, in our future.

But, with the way this thing has been going, it sure seems like it's one of those 'meant to be ' things. We can only give it our best effort and believe...