We arrived in Gatlinburg right as dark had set in. Alan's parents helped us unload the last of the items we had packed. By the time we had unloaded everyone was hungry and ready for bed. Alan's parents went to their hotel for the night. Alan & I found a pizza delivery place and I remember scarfing it down while sitting on our blow up mattress that had come in handy once again (we did not have the energy to get the bed set up yet).
There was a mixture of shock, excitement, and overwhelm that settled it. We needed to not only get set up to live but it was October and tourism really pops in the Smokies the second the leaves change color. We knew we needed to get open as soon as possible. For that night though, we celebrated the fact that the move was over. It had been a tiring last couple of months and having that behind us felt pretty amazing. For that night, we avoided looking in the front room (where our shop would be) because it was absolutely packed almost to the ceiling with everything we had moved with.
We slept well and woke the next morning with the daunting task of starting to set up home and clear out our shop space so that we could get open. One of the first days after arriving, Alan took a morning to go fishing with the owner of the Mountain Arts Center (and new fishing buddy), Daniel. Alan is a life long fisherman and of course jumped at the opportunity to go fishing.
When they got back Daniel surprised us with a plate of freshly cooked trout. It was delicious and I was immediately very supportive of Alan doing early morning fishing if it meant that I got a meal out of it.
We soon set to setting up our living space.
Penny assisting hanging some cabinets. She looks thrilled.
First iteration of our little mini kitchen.
We didn't have time to paint or decorate, but I wanted to get our things that we needed out of storage, and we had to get rid of boxes, so all my assorted frames, etc got quickly hung up. Every box we eliminated gave us more space to move around and set up shop.
In the meantime, we were emptying out the shop area and started making progress towards setting up shop and opening.
We also had to make a checkout counter and desk. We didn't really have any idea what we were going to do about that. Before we moved, we had to get rid of a lot of furniture. There were some pieces that we opted to break apart for the wood to be used later instead of simply donating it. I had a cherry vanity that I had in the house and prior to that in my childhood bedroom. It had been around for years and while my parents didn't want it back and we had no space for it, I didn't want to just get rid of it.
Long story short, the top of that vanity became the countertop to our checkout counter. Alan assembled it quickly the evening before we opened. I was pretty impressed with how it turned out.
About 2 weeks after moving, Alan's parents came back to the Mountains to deliver the beautiful hand routed sign that his father had made for the shop. It was routed out of a beautiful piece of Sassafras and was a huge labor of love.
It was exciting to have them there again and to have them see what we had done in the couple of weeks since we had seen them. Alan & his Dad spent the weekend putting together shelves and the last step was to hang the finished sign up outside the shop.
Hanging up the sign was the last big thing we had to do to get ourselves ready to open. It was bustling outside with customers and we were eager and nervous to officially open our doors.