The Importance of Taking Time

Many of you remember that back in 2012, Marlboro Man and I lost our marbles and bought an old, dilapidated building on Main Street in our small town.

You can read my very first post about it here: The Building, 2012.

 

I love looking at the photos of the building right when we bought it.

Remember the ceiling tiles? Well, there are millions of ’em.

They all came down and were stripped to the bare bones…

Then powder coated in a natural metal finish so they’ll literally last forever.

It’s nice to look at the photos and remember how far we’ve come. Especially in part of the upstairs…

Which we converted into our family/ranch office back in 2014.

And the other half of the upstairs space (oh my)…

Where we’ve had everything from a cowboy Christmas party…

To a banquet for our local Chamber of Commerce.

To a graduation party for Alex and her best friend Meg. This upstairs space isn’t totally finished, but we fixed the floor, stripped down to the original brick wall, and restored all the windows.

This was the building back in the day. It was the Osage Mercantile and was a bustling point of commerce in our small town.

This was the building when we bought it.

We eventually removed the awning, which had been added sometime in the fifties (we think!)

And we uncovered the ages-old, original granite column…

…Which had been concealed under brick for years.

All part of the effort to bring the building back to the way it once was!

Back then, Marlboro Man and I had to take a little break from the project to emotionally recover from getting all the windows redone. Ha! There were a lot of them.

We kept as much as the original wood floor in our office upstairs as we could, replacing only pieces that were rotted through, then refinishing them.

Again…it has been an adventure! A four-year, up-and-down, start-and-stop adventure.

From the beginning of our building project, Marlboro Man and I have had a clear vision for what it would eventually become: A mercantile store in the vein of its original identity, as well as a restaurant/deli and gathering place for both locals and visitors to our area. We never gave an opening date, though, because we knew we had to just proceed and see how things moved along. Completing the office space upstairs was a little more of a low-hanging fruit, and we are so glad we finished it first so that we could be more present for the progress on the rest of the building.

When we were comfortable moving forward, we moved forward. When we felt it was right to wait, we waited.

Now, recently, so many exciting things have fallen into place, it’s as if the building itself is buttoning up it shirt, sitting up straight, and saying, “Okay. I’m ready for the next chapter!” The vision we’ve always had is moving forward at full steam now, and August is the opening date we feel comfortable declaring. Sometimes in life, you just have to barrel through, push through, and make things happen…but in this case, it has been a really clear and instructive lesson on the importance of taking time, not rushing, and letting things happen naturally.

I’m very excited, and I’ll be posting updates here on Confessions (rather than Life & Style or another part of this website) since the building is so very much a part of our lives now.

Love,
P-Dub