Floral & Old - Vintage Shop Construction

My idea for having a brick and mortar shop for Floral & Old came about one day, after being sick and tired of my house being soooo messy... overflowing with my vintage finds for my business, trying to take photos in the mess, creating my wreath art in the house, again leaving a wake of mess behind me! I had been doing the markets for over a year at this stage, carting Floral & Old products to the Mount, Waihi, Hamilton, Auckland to sell. I thought, right, I need a place where I can...

• Store all my treasures out of the house.

• Indulge my need for creating beautiful displays of my products, and creating an inspiring space for them to be displayed in

• Create my wreath art

• Have customers come and shop/pick up their purchases

I didn't know where the money would come from to create this shop, I just knew we needed to do it, and we would find a way. First up was some planning, thinking about the size, layout, materials and feel I wanted to create. So drawings were drawn, a moodboard was created (see below). I knew I wanted to recycle/repurpose as much as possible in the construction, and that I wanted it to have tonnes of character. So this vision of an old corrugated miners hut contrasting with more modern finishes was what I held in my head.

The idea was dreamt up I think at the end of 2020, and by the beginning of January 2021 we had the ok from the bank to borrow some money to create this vision! Luckily I have an amazingly clever builder husband that also seems to enjoy the challenge of building using upcycled materials.

The location was chosen - a corner of our rural property in Apata, halfway between Tauranga and Katikati. Trees had to be chopped down first, then construction began. Jon started on this 30m2 building, fitting it in, on his weekends and around his own building jobs.

I sourced a lot of the recycled materials as we went along, finding the sash windows on Trade Me, picking them up from the Kaimais and Te Aroha. The corrugated iron on the cladding and roof were from my sisters old garage and other buildings torn down. The counter drawers unit was picked up from an op shop. The beautiful wooden truss inside, was macrocarpa pulled out of an old deck. The verandah was from an old timber fence, the palings are used as the decking, posts to hold up the verandah, and the railings used to support the verandah roof. We also repurposed old bricks, and leftover subway tiles to create the counter. All of the lighting fixtures are secondhand as well as all of the furniture/ display tables in the shop!

My favourite piece in the shop is the hutch dresser I painted in a beautiful shade of green...see below (you can see the open door next to it which is the spare room where I used to keep all my Floral & Old treasures. You can also see I couldn't resist placing some of my beautiful products on, HALFWAY through painting to see how it would look!! Haha so impatient)

We had family come and do a working bee, helping with pink batting, painting, tidying up. It was really nice to have them involved in the project. One of the finishing touches I had in my vision right from the start was a white brick fireplace. I took up the challenge of creating this myself, having never bricked before. Found it to be a messy, not fun, kind of job! But I'm so proud that I did it, and think that it looks so beautiful!

Moving in day was... like Christmas!! My sisters and parents came to help on move in day... we brought all the stuff over from the house. And lovingly unwrapped everything out of their boxes, and started to place them on the display tables around the shop. My OCD brain had to have everything colour coordinated. Because with such a jumble of old stuff, it can easily look like an op shop, and that is not the look I was striving for! Opening Day was July 2021, it was lovely to have friends, family, neighbours and some customers come and join me for some nibbles

and have a gander at our new shop.

We didn't quite have everything completed when we opened up shop. We were to put up signage at the bottom of our driveway. The driveway itself needed a major makeover, being a gravel potholed mudpit! So retaining, concreting, and then planting was completed towards the end of 2021. I'm now looking forward to seeing the gardens fully flourishing. We planted espaliered fruit trees along the retaining wall, and have created a chicken run behind so the chookies can have a long run and hang out - they are super friendly and love to be around people.

I would like to give a special thank you to my wonderful husband Jon, who had the faith in me and my vision, the patient of a saint through this process ,the skills to turn this vision into reality... and just supporting me in general throughout this whole Floral & Old phase of my life!!

That was our journey of the opening of our Floral & Old wee vintage shop. I hope you have enjoyed following along.