A question we seem to get often is how we got started, so that brings us to the beginning of Farmhouse Chic….
I started this sweet little blog of mine in 2010! Long before the days of Pinterest or before anyone knew who Chip & Jojo were! It was my little spot where I could share my daily inspirations! It was like my own clip board that I was sharing with anyone willing to look & listen! As time went on & life happened, we purchased our first home. This is where I really began to get a passion for creating & began to find out what my interior design preference really was.
Fast- forward a bit to about 2015. This was my first year branching out & taking part in a local barn sale. I had a collection of vintage/ antiques & hand-made items. I was just beginning to create my own farmhouse signs at this point. I had a successful first show & it left me eager to work even harder for the next show. I signed up to take part in the next barn sale she was having, which would of been June 2016. Little did I know, during the coming months, my life was about to change.
I ended up getting a divorce & really questioned if this was going to be the end of Farmhouse Chic. By the grace of God, I met an amazing man who had recently gone through what I had just gone through. We began to date & not long after, we began creating some of our very own pieces together! He enjoyed wood-working & was the brains behind my visions! We did our first show together in Fall of 2016. Since then, we have done almost a dozen shows together & keep working hard to make Farmhouse Chic better each time!
We always seemed to get the question: “Do you have a store?”. Always responding “no” seemingly left me feeling bleak. People were interested in our products & the style that we were offering! The mere thoughts of them wanting to shop our items from a store was beyond exciting! That brought us to seriously considering the thoughts. After a lot of contemplating the pros & cons of opening our own brick & mortar storefront, we decided to go for it!
My dad owns Ohio State Barns, so we decided we wanted to order our own little custom, Amish built barn! We purchased a 14×30 high barn in mid August 2017. Our barn was delivered in September 2017, simply the shell of what was to come! We had a lot of work ahead of us, but the vision of the finished, 420- square foot space is what we kept in mind! We literally touched every part of that little building!
Our (or should I say, his) first project was making our custom barn door! He created a beautiful wood door, that we would paint black. We purchased our barn slider & hardware from Amazon. Links below for reference. Next, Kenny ran all of the wiring & electric to the building. We hung our barn light which would eventually illuminate our sign!
Once he did that, we were ready to insulate the walls. Following the insulation, we faux shiplapped the walls! This was a long project since he cut all of the strips of shiplap on his own, but this is what changed the entire look of the store!! I didn’t worry about going through and filling the nail holes. I thought that would give the walls character! It was finally time to paint! EVERYTHING was going to be white ☺️ Except the floors… we decided on something a little more bold for that!
Stay tuned for the next post as we continue to work & update our little store! Thanks so much for stopping by today & getting to know us & our store a little more!
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