Sneak Peek of our Renovation!
Welcome to a behind-the-scenes look at the bookstore’s renovation.
Stage one: moving inventory
In early January, we moved all of the inventory from the Bloom Room (our Cape Cod, cooking, and gardening sections) and the lower children’s level (graphic novels, early readers, and paperback picture books) into areas of the store not impacted by the renovation. Our children’s section suddenly became extra cozy!! If you have been in, you have seen that we are making it work, though it is a squeeze! (Thank you for coming by… the winter would be slow without you.)
Stage two: gutting the Bloom Room and the lower children’s room
Gutting revealed that the former interior walls were at one time the building’s exterior. Look at those lovely long windows! Wondering about the notches above the windows? One hypothesis is that a roofed porch extended towards 6A.
The west facing interior wall was also once an exterior wall and a building entrance. Any guess where in the current store the doorway takes you? Read on to learn if you guessed correctly.
Stage 3: framing and flooring
I like this shot because it helps with orientation. If you were to walk through the plywood at the center of the picture, you would enter the children’s section in the bookstore's front room. The picture also gives you a first glimpse of the ramp that will connect the two sections of the building. The ramp represents one of our driving goals for the renovation: to improve store accessibility.
A second ramp is being added in the back, allowing people to loop through the store. If you were to travel up the ramp and through the temporary wall, you would end up in the current game/science room. (That, my friends, is the answer to the question above.)
Of course, adding ramps inside the store would be meaningless if we didn’t also address our entrance. We are keeping our current entrance as is. After all, we love everything about it… almost. It is charming and allows people to wander past the gardens before entering the store; we are able to greet you as soon as you enter, and, when you do, you get an immediate feel for our passion for both adult and children's fiction. BUT, and this is a big but, not everyone can easily navigate the stairs and some people are not able to enter at all. Our solution? The bookstore’s first door, seen above, is becoming a fully accessible entrance. We are excited to create an equally charming and welcoming entry into the store.
I’ll write about the other main motivation behind the renovation in a future journal entry - plus let you in on our secret (garden) - so please check back periodically! Thanks for reading and feel free to drop a comment below, or pop in to see the excitement firsthand.
