In July of 2002 I had heard that some friends of our were going to be buying a motel and restaurant complex in the town next to ours, Wilmington.  Sue and I had been thinking of trying a summer time satellite gallery, so I asked Mona if they were considering leasing the old gift shop next to the restaurant that we were interested.

It turned into an 11 month ordeal for Frank and Mona Dubay because one of the original owners passed away, the property was in probate for awhile and we weren't sure which way it was going to go.  So for most of the winter and spring we weren't even counting on it, so we invested little or no time into the project of opening another gallery.

We did buy two jewelry cases from the Ames store that went out of business and just stored those away.  In late April it was looking much more promising that we would open the gallery, after all the Dubays were actually running the restaurant and operating the motel and their lawyer kept telling them they were going to sign soon.  So we began the process of dismantling the room and cleaning it up.

Mrs. Hill the former owner and her husband used the gift space to sell craft projects that she made, but they also sold produce and they build an air conditioned room in one corner and that was my first project, to take apart that room.

They had lots of existing light fixtures in the ceiling, so once I actually put up a ceiling I was able to install track lighting that covered all the areas of the room.

In six weeks we created quite a transformation.  We scraped  the walls and floor and then painted the room.  Sue and I rented a post hole power auger and it took the two of us to hold onto this monster machine as it drilled into the rocky parking lot, making holes for our sign posts.

I built rustic displays for the gallery and my daughters helped me to sand and stain.

We were able to open the new business on June 28th.