Last summer, the middle room got a makeover for its inauguration as my giclée print business/office. This room is more or less the heart of the building, with the large wood-burning furnace and eight foot long skylight. It didn’t always look like this…

… not by a long shot. In fact, a good deal of our time that first year was spent getting rid of junk we inherited when we bought the place. We salvaged everything we could that had any value. I often thought of it as “making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!” Throughout the building now you can find a variety of objects that got some kind of treatment. That blue bookcase on the wall, for example, was a broken cobbled-together shelf unit, with some crown moulding stuck on in places as an afterthought.

The paint job was truly hideous. The wonderful tin ceiling had been painted a battleship grey, the walls a greyish white, and the trim was flesh tone! I’m not making this up. The floor was painted dark brown.

This was the first room we worked on, starting with the walls and ceiling, which we sprayed. The cabinets came next, getting my signature periwinkle. Incidentally, that particular project wasn’t a lot of fun. Can you say, “mouse poop?” I try not to remember some aspects of this journey. There was a reason our parents tried to talk us out of buying this place! Both of our families have experience with building and renovation, so they had an idea what we were in for. Some things just go with the territory.

The room went through several incarnations over the years. This photo to the left was taken in 2002 before we completed the commercial kitchen.

The last two photos are from the period — 2003 – 2006 — when the restaurant was operating full time. The room was known then as the “back gallery.”

The art work that you see here was created by Malcolm O’Leary. We sold three of his paintings that month. (Malcolm is also a member of the Killdeer Artisans Guild, so we continue to have an association.)