Vanilla

It's a word that Matt and I sometimes use to describe something that is bland...generic...boring...safe...non-threatening...

And it is the perfect word for this color...

 

It's official!  We have completed our move and have closed the Watertown location, and I have had enough of a breather to be getting around to talking about it.  The final stage of the process was transforming the building from our lively, rich color scheme of purple, black, and touches of gold, to the neutral shade you see above.  Though you'd almost never be able to tell it without new-fallen snow right beside it for comparison, we actually couldn't bring ourselves to go with a stark white.  This shade is actually called "country white," but both because of the shade and because of the personal connotation of the word, I can't help but think of vanilla when I look at it.

These walls, where we painted the plaster that remained over the brick, were particularly beautiful to me...

 

Which made this pretty difficult to watch...

And now they look like this...

The whole process felt very much like going behind ourselves with an eraser, removing every trace of our existence in the place.  The building looks very neutral, as if just anyone was there or could be there, and there really isn't any evidence left that we ever had a store in Watertown.

 

 

As hard as it was do undo all of that work, though, we actually didn't mind much.  We were in such a desperate place when we finally decided that we needed to close that store, and we are extremely grateful that our landlord was so willing to work with us and let us out of our lease.  This was really his only request, so that the building would be primed and ready to be bought or leased by the next person.  We were sort of taken back in time to when we did all of the work in the first place, making the place our own, with a certain amount of optimism about how it would go.  And it was frustrating to feel a bit like we had to go back before we could move forward.  But ultimately, we were happy to oblige.

And so ends Phase One of the "future of Dead Man's" plan.  It's time to work on Phase Two, and I have actually already begun.  More details about Phase Two will be forthcoming at a later date.

I think the following images are an appropriate way to close the door on this chapter.  Here's hoping the next one goes well!