Monday Montage

Tonight's montage is a full circle tour of our back room.

First, I would like to tell you how this room came to be.

many moons ago, Bob and I wanted to start a prim shoppe.

After much research,
and knowing a few folks who had opened shoppes in their homes,
we decided to make a visit to our local township office

to find out if we could do open a shoppe in our home.

They gave us the green light and told us to come back

before we opened so that they could inspect.

The room we decided to do was an enclosed porch with

windows completely surrounding three walls and a door.

There was also a door to the main part of the house.

After many months of removing walls, windows and even raising the ceiling,

we began to fill it to the brim with prims.

We scoured the state for primitives, I created many crafts,

we bought cases of candles wholesale, reproduction early lighting,

 potpourri and even specialty popcorn.

Bob and I were so excited when our little shoppe was finally completed!

We decided to name our business

Back Porch Primitives.

The day finally came to go back to our township to get the inspection....

well they turned us down for a business licence.

We were devastated.

Supposedly, the person who told us we could have a business out of our home,

thought we were going to do an internet business...

which was not true at ALL.

The township then told us we could just have as many garage sales as we wanted,

even thought we are only allowed 2 per year...

how generous of them we thought.

Well we did not let that deter us.

We rented 1000 ft space in an antique mall in Marine City.

The owner of the mall let us build a real porch using real wood and

we added an awning and built a window to our little back room of the mall.

We even stenciled Back Porch Primitives on the window.

The owner was not real thrilled about having prims in his store.

He told us they did not sell, but we insisted that we were going to

bring prim lovers to our mall.

Well we succeeded and ended up being his top dealer after the first month

of moving in...and continued to be his #1 vendor until we left...true story.

Now we own our own mall in the same town,

but changed the name to Back Porch Antiques.

Our first love is still prims,

but we do purchase many other antiques for our store.

So here is where it all began.

Just now it is our back room.

Looking into the room from our kitchen.

We took the door off and added a pocket door and a screen door.

Notice where I hung that checkerboard?

This is the screen door.

We found it in a barn that an antique owner had.

She sold it to us for $15...

I think she either felt sorry for us or thought we were crazy,

as we told her we were going to hang it in our house.

I have a hand of tobacco hanging from it currently.

Does anyone notice that I forgot to take one Christmas item down? LOL

Plus I still forgot to remove the price tag..what a dufuss.

I moved the brown cabinet over to add a new...

Primitive Bench.

This originally was an early farm hand bed, but someone added the seating to it.

This is the other item I kept from Bob's mother lode.

What do you think?

This cabinet I am not too fond of.

When I find one that I really like...out it goes.

The 15 gal crock is where I keep my stash of craft patterns.

The shelf towards the ceiling holds a portion of my tobacco tin collection.

I started collecting these before I met Bob.

Neither of us smoke, so folks think its odd that we collect these.

In this room, we also have a Mail Pouch thermometer and

a Mail Pouch barn signed print.

I crocheted the lap afghan on the chair.

I keep my sewing machine in here so I can watch TV and work.

This small cabinet holds my glass coffee jars.

I love the colors and graphics of these old beauties.

The white long johns actually came from a fellow antique dealer.

He was showing us his renovated barn

 and I spotted these in the rafter...and I had to have them. :o) 

Full circle looking back into the kitchen.

A couple of my snow folks.

The one on the left is a Sweet Peas Primitives pattern.

On the right is my own design.

Another snowman I created.

Little Ace kept following me around, so I had to take his pic.

But by the time I decided to take his picture, I think he got mad at me.

What do you think?

Well, this has been a long montage,

and I hope you enjoyed the full circle tour.

New Years Blessings

Janice