If you are personal friends of ours, you’ve probably already heard bits about our big news. If you’re fans, you’ve maybe noticed that we’ve been pretty quiet on social media the past few weeks. That’s because we’ve been working on our big news for 2017: a new studio!
We are super excited to announce that in 2017 we will make our home at 206 Adams St in downtown Fairmont, WV. We’re going to share this really neat space with Melissa of Melissa Rosic Photography!
Chris and I have always been active members in our community, and supporters of our small town, so it really means a lot to us to establish our new home base right in the center of downtown, surrounded by other small businesses who make Fairmont the town that it is.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve considered moving our work out of our home and into its own space. We spent a lot of the fall of 2015 looking at spaces, running numbers, and considering options. We weren’t in love with anything, and I wasn’t convinced that we needed more space. We even spoke with Melissa about the possibility of sharing space, but we just didn’t find anything that was just right for all of us. Melissa did find a little space of her own, and has been doing some amazing work with babies, children, and families in it.
This year….even with all my organizing and sorting and creative solutions, our business has outgrown our home. About a month ago, I got a phone call about some cool space that had become available. The owner knows me pretty well, knows that I’m a sucker for unique spaces, and invited us to take a look. We were in love, but it was a bit much for us to take on alone. Melissa mentioned that while she loved having a studio, her current location was a bit small, and her lease was just about up, so she would still be open to sharing space with us.
That’s all it took to make this happen. Well, to make it official. Now we’ve moved on to transforming the space into exactly what we all want it to be. We expect to be busy with that well into the first of the year, and hope to have an open house in the spring to say “Thank You” to all of our clients and the vendors we’ve worked so closely with over the past few years.
In the meantime, if you want to see the space, you have to come ready to work! It’s a really interesting little building. It used to be an alley between two larger buildings, until the 1920’s when it was enclosed as its own building. During the most recent remodel of the space, the owner was removing some ruined plaster from one of the walls and found a really great ‘ghost sign’ (though it’s not so ghostly, it’s pretty crisp and clear) that was originally on the exterior wall of the building next door. When refinishing the space, he left that brick exposed and framed it nicely, and it’s a gorgeous accent to the space. So now our permanent guest in the space is Mr. Sam B. Iseman: Clothier, Hattier, and Furnisher. I don’t know much about Sam yet (aside from the fact that he’s a very dapper dresser, as one might expect from a clothier) but I’m a huge history geek and have already started down the rabbit trail of finding out everything I can about him.
For now, those are all the details we can share. Be sure to follow us on Instagram for some behind the scenes info in our Stories on how we make things come together, and we look forward to welcoming you into our new space this spring!