All the fun of the move

I left off in the last entry that I had loaded up the studio with all kinds of belongings. By May it was a warehouse of bins, boxes, half packed photo gear, etc. Quite the mess, but the plan was that by the end of June, we’d be moving around the corner to the new location. The only thing we were able to do was carve out a small room so that Denise could continue to offer her aromatherapy spa sessions.

Makeshift Spa Room

While the rest of the studio is now a warehouse, I carved out this small space as Denis’ spa room. At least she can continue to work her business while we wait.

June came and went and no word from the tenants that were supposed to vacate our new suite. Come to find out, they were building out a new location and the work was taking longer than expected, so they extended their lease a month.

And I found out that there were other discussions with other building tenants that were also interested in the suite, so now began a series of discussions between the building owner and three tenant business owners. There was a lot of miscommunications, non-communications, some trying to go behind the backs of others for an advantage, etc. July was not a fun month. I’m having to turn away business that required a functional studio. July turned into August. Mid August we all finally decided among all the stakeholders who was going to move where so now just waiting for the new suite to become available to start the move.

September 1, the vacating business finally began moving out. But they didn’t take everything. In all the discussions, they thought that one of the other businesses wanted to buy some of the materials and furnishings, so they just left them in the suite. Tired of all this, I started moving boxes and bins - as much as I could without the other stuff being moved out. I had to get the landlord engaged again as I was paying for this new suite now but unable to complete the move.

The vacating business was a construction contractor, so they had many sample cabinets in the front room and another office. Those had been left behind for one of the other contractors in the building, who now had to figure out how to remove and store all of this. There were heavy duty shelves of construction materials too, and a broken pallet jack. Confused? Trust me, the whole thing was a nightmare.

This large hutch occupied one wall of what we will convert to a multi-purpose room.

And another wall was adorned with sample cabinets

Forward now to October 31th, when all of the material is finally removed from our new suite, and I’ve moved all of my material and equipment over. I want to thank our friends who came out and helped us move the last loads of heavy gear. Sounds like this story is done, right. Well, not exactly. Next week I’ll share some of the work we did to begin the build-out. Stay tuned.