March 27, 2010

Well. Finally have all the music filed except for miscellaneous and vintage. The rooms are a mess. However, we have the furniture in the room. I need to start putting it together and touch up the wood. We may have some assistance in the bell cleaning aspect. I'm excited, nervous. We want to be able to say, we're open and it looks great!!
I want to send postcards out and encourage people to check us out. I want to see the place done first!!

March 20, 2010

Spring!! Yeehaw!!
Anyway, believe it or not, I have finally finished counting and cataloguing our Hope Publishing and Lorenz Publishing music. They are also newly filed. Now comes the really messy part. I'm amazed that we're even considering the possibility of opening any time soon. HA. Anyway..I basically pull all the music out of each drawer and and separate it according to publisher: Alfred, Beckenhorst, GIA, Jeffers, and miscellaneous (which is actually quite a few small publishers as well as the vintage music). Then, I'm just filing all of this alphabetically (of course). I'm up to the F's. The problem is that it makes a real mess. However, Joanne K came over one day and helped organize some cabinets as well as organize the customer room.
Norm is bringing over the piano this weekend. We brought over the bells from the storage area. Now to neaten and put out music in a nice way. I still don't have a desk. That is coming soon:)

March 8, 2010

Wow, it's been a while. I've been extremely busy keeping it together with directing 2 choirs and ringing in two. Bells of the Lakes had their Bellfest on Saturday and I had a lot to do for that. Plus I wanted to have Heitz Handbells first show at Bellfest. Then we had a concert Sunday afternoon in Faribault.

Amazing! And I wonder when I have time to work on the house!

Anway, I need to catch up on all the things you have missed in setting up our store. I wanted to show you pictures of the move. So, first you have a picture of Norm. He was still really recovering from his stroke and therefore "supervising".

Norm's storage area was filled with 44 - 3 drawer file cabinets and about 13 - 2 drawer file cabinets plus close to 50 boxes of music. These pictures show a little bit of it all. But all of that filled a 24 foot truck to capacity!

After Norm and I spent 3 hours prepping to move, the movers took 3 hours to fill the truck. I drove the truck to Richfield to our newly painted office and our 3 "assistants" took almost 5 hours to empty the truck and put the cabinets in place.

Norm did alot of measuring!! Now we are finally together, inventorying, and trying to get things put into place so we can open Suite S to customers.

February 20, 2010

Well, we are "in". Doesn't mean much when the place is a total mess, but we are there. Both of us took Wednesday off as we were so sore. Thursday we did a little more of extras. Friday, Andrew (Norm's friend) came and helped us organize the large file cabinets so they look significantly better. I then cleaned 3/4 of the cabinets. We started reorganizing the music!! Yeah!!

February 17, 2010

What's moving in like? Sigh. Well, there is fixing things so that the "Professional Movers" can put things into a van. 2 1/2 hours of physical work for me, 3 hours of work for them. Drive this 24 foot truck to our new location. Not that big of a deal, except man did it drive hard. Very sluggish, hard to turn, scccaaaarrreey. I made sure someone helped me back up each time. Went down an alley...whew. Finally, after maybe 45 minutes of trying to position and reposition the truck in the alley, we gave up and I drove the truck into the parking lot. Longer distance for moving the file cabinets, but easier for the 3 guys to move. Two of these guys are friends of Norm and Frank came to help at my request. Yeah Frank. PLUS, one of the 2 wheelers' wheels was flat. Frank went and got that fixed. Brother. 4 1/2 hours of moving into the office. I carried a lot of boxes but refused to move the file cabinets much as they weighed between 100 and 200 pounds. Way too much for me. Finally, at 9:00 pm we were finished. The place is a biggggggg mess. So much work to do. But I drove the now empty and easy to handle truck back to Budget, picked up my car, said bye to Norm, got a sandwich, and went home. Boy am I sore today.

February 15, 2010

This is the first coating of Suite S. Joanne, Ken, and I worked on it Tuesday the 9th. Ken taught me how to trim more perfectly and I'm much better at it now. We managed to first coat three walls.

We finished the first coating and I started the second coating with Twyla on Wednesday. We finished on Thursday and the place is looking great!!

After a couple of false starts and a sudden illness on Norm's part, we hope to begin moving tomorrow!

February 6, 2010

Well, I did it! Actually on Thursday my friend Twyla came to help and stayed all day so that we could get it finished. Yeah!! Suite R is painted and it looks nice. On Friday the rug cleaners came. I will return on Monday to start painting Suite S. Just thought I'd show you some before and after pics.
Carol

ok. I don't know how to do this very well yet. I can't seem to get the pictures arranged right. Oh well. Something new to learn :)