grand opening

So much was going on in the last two weeks. Sometimes it felt like sitting in a train and all the occasions are like landscape that you pass by. At least that's how I'm feeling at the moment. So writing a post from time to time is a good opportunity for a retrospective.

For almost a month now we've been entirely occupied by renovating the shop. We set a date for the grand opening (!) and made plans for things that needed to get done. As we wrote it down it seemed quite realistic but things ALWAYS take longer than you expect them to take. Murphy's law I guess. Like installing the baseboards. Plan: one day. Reality: two days, still not finished. Distribution of flyers for the opening. Plan: half a day. Reality: a whole tiring day. Setting up the show room. Plan: one day. Reality: ongoing...but we found a nice sofa on ebay!

Here's a shot of the poster in the front window.   

We had been looking for a sofa for the showroom for a long time. It should be cosy and comfortable. Oldenburg has got some second hand and old furniture sellers and we visited them all. Found nothing. Finally we found a very nice sofa and a matching chair on ebay. And we bought it. Drei, Zwei, Eins, Meins. Looking on ebay didn't occur to me in the first place but it was a brilliant idea. We borrowed a car and headed to Osnabrück to pick it up and it looked even better than it looked on the photos. Nice one! Cherry wood and the seats are in a perfect condition.

 So the showroom was fine. Next job was the cleaning. A lot of cleaning. I bought a hole arsenal of cleaning products for the first strike.
There were some items left on the list of things to do but we managed to get everything clean and to get some sparkling wine, orange juice, water and 100 glasses. We also managed to organise some live music which was a real treat! I invited some old friends of mine to come and play and I was glad they could come. They did a very nice performance and I think everyone enjoyed it.
Over all we had two very interesting days with lots of nice people. Here are some impressions (the workshop will never be that clean again...).

The best good luck cake one can get!