Now that the chaotic estate sale is behind us, it’s time to concentrate on opening that darn store. Yes, we are still dealing with trying to get Con Ed to turn the meter on. They won’t accept our commercial application without the IRS confirmation of tax ID and IRS won’t fax it unless we are sitting in front of a fax machine at the time. Who has a fax these days?? After holding on the phone twice for an hour at a time, we learned that IRS does not consider Efax a reliable outlet. Kinkos or Staples are fine. Doesn’t make sense, but ok. Well, that’s top of the to-do list.

Tomorrow is a trip up to Beacon, NY to check out the inventory of an antique shop that went out of business. The former owner, who has impeccable taste for a straight guy, just wants all of it out of his way. If we acquire the whole lot, we may just run it as one big sale or auction out of the shop instead of adding as inventory that will sit there for months. The reason being, it would be 100% antiques and we wouldn’t have room for salvage or repurposed goodies. Variety is the spice of life.

So, that’s where we’re at this week. We now resume our regular scheduled blogcast.

It’s here. The gig we’ve been working on for weeks. Snow days, personal emergencies and frozen pipes at my Rockaway house yesterday leave us completely unprepared for this estate sale. Yet, doors will be open by 9am and this thing will run through Sunday. Come on down!

319 73rd Street between 4th and 5th Avenues in Bay Ridge

R train to 77th

Friday, Saturday and Sunday 9am-4pm

We’ll have the coffee on if Family Member remembers to bring it. If not, we’ll be grouchy.

PS: Apologies in advance for the chaos.

More info

Many of you have already met Emilia through her DIY articles here or even back in the day when we did the Brooklyn Flea together. Well, now she’s officially part of the (2 person) Reclaimed Home team. As in, she gave notice at her current job and is on the payroll here. That means we better get down to business ASAP!

Here’s Emilia’s bio that’s going over on the “About” page….

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Emilia DeVitis arrived in NYC in 1968 with her family from Abruzzo, Italy and grew up in Astoria, Queens. She received her BFA from The School of Visual Arts and has been active in the arts field for over 25 years.

Over the course of these years, Emilia has taught painting, both privately and at after school programs, sold work at galleries, art fairs, retail shops and in front of The Metropolitan Museum of Art where she and Phyllis met as employees some 28 years ago. She has been commissioned for murals, faux and decorative techniques and original paintings for various restaurants, bars and private clientele.

Emilia has worked for the past 10 years as an Art Director/Studio Manager for an art production studio in NYC where she managed the staff and the production of paintings, sculptures, murals and installations for hotels and corporate environments nationwide. This position has expanded her knowledge of art techniques and the use of many different mediums.

Now she is joining forces with her longtime friend Phyllis at the new Reclaimed Home shop in Brooklyn.

Digging for dusty basement treasures in Bay Ridge estate sale house dawn till dusk. Con Ed still hasn’t responded to commercial application, so chances are the renovation on the store won’t start this weekend as planned. No electricity means no lights or heat. Emilia, the sole employee, was supposed to start on Monday and her schedule has already been switched.

So yeah, that’s about it. Have a nice weekend!

The previous report on the store front was that I couldn’t even lift the gate to get in. Well, woo-hoo, I got in!

The shop’s last incarnation was a tattoo and piercing parlor. They seem to have had several stations. The walls and half walls will come down making it a larger open space. Apart from some wall demolition, the renovation needed seems pretty straightforward. Perhaps because I’m not planning on going crazy as it’s a salvage shop instead of a fancy schmancy business or perhaps because I’ve seen a lot worse. This will be easy breezy.

Better-than-iPhone pics to come in the following days. Sorry ’bout that, old mates.

Ruh-roh.  Looks like the Reclaimed Home store is a reality now. Due to my impatience and lack of planning and foresight, the lease was signed yesterday and the place is mine!

Now what? Well,considering the fact that I couldn’t open the gate because I was trying to lift it from the bottom instead of using the pulley (never had a storefront before), I haven’t even been inside since I viewed it the one time a month ago. I’m going away this weekend so looks like it’s Monday the earliest.

Then? Renovations! The place needs work. The intention is to make it clean and comfortable. It doesn’t need to be all fancy schmancy since it’s a salvage shop. Hey, it will have heat and lights which is more than some of these other places have.

Hopefully, I can start collecting inventory while renovating. I think the store will be opening by early Spring but then again, I thought my Rockaway house would be finished in months. Ha!

So, that’s it. As of Tuesday, this blog is all about store renovations and inventory. And DIY.

 Woot, woot! The Reclaimed Home “services” page is functional. It’s a mix of past work that was done by myself or my artist co-workers. So, so much that was never photographed, but we’ll document the new stuff moving forward!

We can’t restore an entire home because we’re not licensed contractors but we can take on niche projects for our particular set of skills. That would be the fun, creative ones!

Check out the page!

It seems like only a couple of days ago that I announced plans for a brick and mortar shop. That’s because it WAS only two days ago. Well, I don’t want to jinx anything but I think I found the spot.

Not telling where it is yet because the lease hasn’t been signed and we all know that things can still fall apart. But here are some teases. It’s in Crown Heights. If it was half a block over, it would be in Prospect Heights. Right near Botanic Gardens and Brooklyn Museum. It’s located on the unhip side of Eastern Parkway. But I’ma gonna make it hip.

The storefront is a starter space. It’s not quite large enough for everything we want to do but it’s plenty big for the time being. If this goes through, we get into the space to renovate starting New Year’s Day and may be ready for our close up a couple of months after that. It needs renovation. Yay!

And that’s all you’re getting for now.

If you think this happened quickly, well, it did and it didn’t. I was looking online for months and never actually viewed any of the places in person. It took only a few days of physically visiting these joints to realize what works best within my means. In other words, there wasn’t a helluva lot to look at within my puny budget.

So, that’s the big news. The website is being tweaked by the talented Rachel Goldstein of Brooklyn Updates. Reclaimed Home is now an LLC and I’ve enlisted Regina Gordon to help with all that legal stuff that goes over my head.

What else? What else? Oh yeah, I’m hemorrhaging money already. Might have to do the dreaded Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Maybe I need a campaign just to do the video?

Something is in the works. Wanna know what? Ok, Reclaimed Home is planning on setting up shop. Yes, that was the plan a couple of years ago, but I had to get just one more renovation out of my system first.

So what’s the plan, man? Well, architectural salvage, repurposed furniture and building materials, vintage and antique finds, some new items that cannot be purchased at big box stores (hello vegan paint!).

But wait, there’s more! An artist pal will be on board and we’ll offer some services as well, such as faux techniques, murals, cabinet refacing and cool transformations for homes and businesses.

We’re in the process of looking for a space now. In Brooklyn. If it’s large enough, we will offer DIY classes and fun event nights such as “Country Auction Night”. Fingers crossed!

Oh yeah, so in the next few weeks, the blog may start to go wonky as it will eventually take a back seat to the welcome page and online store. There will still be daily posts, you just may notice things shifting around. It’s not your eyes playing tricks on you.

Reclaimed Home is about six years old and will be hitting it’s 2000th post in a couple of weeks. Woot. The blog has always been the face of the business, whatever the incarnation of the moment happens to be. Reclaimed Home (the business) has been involved in real estate, salvage, crafts sales and DIY tutorials.

Last year the blog took a back seat to the Rockaway house project but now that there’s time on my hands I’m looking to tweak some things. In a perfect world, I’d like to see more posts rather than less. Since the blog still just consists of one person, don’t expect me to go back to 5 posts per day as in the beginning. That was f*cked! But I’m open to contributors! Do you hear whatI’msayin?

There will also (probably) be a directory or marketplace added. Not going into too much detail now. You’ll see…if it actually happens before I get distracted with a more exciting project.

In any case, right now I’m just trying to keep up with the massive amount of social media that’s out there. Follow my blog with Bloglovin and BlogHer because I said so. Please? And check out that there sidebar for FBTwitPintRSS. Cheers!

Heading up to Woodstock for the long weekend with the pups for some fun in the cold overcast weather.  Enjoy your start to Summer of 2013!

Happy Holidays from Reclaimed Home! See you’s on Wednesday!