Before And After Pics Of Mayflowers Vintage Florist

Yes it's me again !

After a massive few weeks of cleaning and renovating I can now reveal some pics of my new workspace in progress.

It's almost hard to believe that a year and a half ago I began studies to become a florist and now I am almost at the finish line and now I have opened a floristry studio as well.

This is the reason why my poor old blog has taken a back seat.

Our garage has been full to the brim of renovation and household materials for years now. Renovations over the years has led more and more stuff to land in the garage in 'storage'.

It ended up being so full of stuff that we had to almost walk in sideways and tumble over piles of timber in the process.

2 1/2  weeks ago I decided that I wanted to open my business. I registered my company name, cleaned out the garage and had a garage sale  all within a week and then started the task of turning an unfinished storage space into some sort of presentable business address.

It has certainly been a challenge.

Have I mentioned that I had no money in the business account to do any of the work with.......

Everything my husband and I already had in our trash stash was all that we had to work with.

While renovating the inside of our home over the years I had saved a lot of the old skirting boards and architraves. They were beautiful strong pieces of Cedar and I didn't have the heart to throw them in the dumpster. Instead I had my husband stack them in the garage until I found a way to re purpose them.

Well these same boards ended up as the walls of my new business place !

They were half stripped of layers of paint and nailed up 1 by 1 to the walls.

I pulled down every spare cut off of timber from the rafters and used every last one. I found pieces of furniture that I had forgotten we even owned down and gave them a good clean and paint.

We fell short of timber to finish the walls but I will hopefully find some more cedar from a restoration yard to finish it off.

Existing wall shelves were turned into a work bench and a lick of paint on the new timber walls and furniture began to all fall into place and I could see clear progress.

I decided to go for a French them and used black paint to act as a background for my photo's of my arrangements.  I turned old fireplace surrounds into my workbench to smarten it up. These pieces of timber were found in a curbside collection last year.  We scrubbed them and gave them a coat of pint and they look amazing.

It is still work in progress in my new space but it is definitely making great headway.

A beautiful panel of 1940's bark cloth became my backdrop to conceal the rest of the garage that we still haven't completed.  The sweet Lily Of The Valley pattern falls perfectly in to place with my vintage theme.

Anyway I could go on and on but I will just let you see what we have achieved so far.

Boards getting cleaned and re purposed.

The decision was unanimous to not paint the boards because the chippy look blended in so nicely with my vintage theme.

A whole lot of junk somehow found it's way into some sort of order eventually.

and turned into this !

on the other side of the room I chose a different look.

 Bare walls bit by bit were covered with bits and bobs of mismatched timber and were then given a coat of black paint.

It's not quite finished yet but it is looking like it is getting closer. Somewhere in the house I have a pretty roll of Cath Kidston wall paper that I plan to line the wall shelves with to conceal the melamine coating.

An old dressing table provides perfect storage for my papers and supplies and also a place to display my floral arrangements.

The black walls are the perfect colour background to show my blooms off.

The old fireplace surrounds look fantastic as a feature on my simple ply workbench. I had some old oilcloth from years ago which we nailed onto the bench to provide an easy clean work surface that water cannot penetrate.

Before the weekend Mothers Day rush my shelves had a healthy supply of cups and saucers for my designs but now my shelves are empty !  Fantastic.....now I have to restock again at the next flea market (you all know how much I LOVE the flea market !)

So there are a few pics of work in progress.

On Thursday I will bring you a room full of flowers in this workspace and you will see a massive transformation.
  I can't wait to show you all !

  See you all then

                                                                                 x