Havin' Some Fun Now! The Mercantile Adventure Continues...

The fireplace, the gorgeous woodwork, Kelsey's artwork and some prairie wildflowers.

Oh, we're having so much fun at the Mercantile! The store is open for business, and as we cycle through some of the older merchandise (purchased last year when I got way ahead of myself!) new exciting stuff is coming in. As soon as it's up on the website I'll talk about it here. In the meantime, be sure to check the Sale section of the Mercantile online store - we're marking stuff down in a serious way and are adding new items every week.

When in doubt, improvise. This is our BYOBag display, featuring bags made of recycled cotton, organic cotton, recycled plastic bags, recycled plastic bottles, and hemp.
What's not to love?

And the work on the upstairs is so, so beautiful. Tom has refinished and varnished all of the floors, and Bob, Kurt and French are crafting the most beautiful stairway, with balusters, newel posts and all kinds of things I never ever considered before. I mean, who really looks at staircases? You go up, you go down, you try not to fall. But now, we've become obsessed. When Kurt and I are watching movies on DVD, we often have to rewind because we're so busy looking at staircases in the scenes that we miss the dialog. Sheesh.

The staircase, still in progress. On the right, under the stairs, is Innkeeper Amy's Harry Potter-esque office. All of the woodwork was hand-crafted - no kits from Home Despot or Lowe's...

View from the landing, newel posts and plinths (oooh, there's another good word!) under construction.

One of my favorite parts of the building is the downstairs bathroom door. Like much of the building, it has a story. Kurt's late dad, Clyde, used to always call the bathroom "the library." As in "I'm going to the library for a few minutes." So when I found this door shoved behind a pile of chairs at the Ewing School auction, I knew that I had to take it home. We got it for $1. Once polished it will be as good as new. We will, of course, construct a curtain for privacy. And the Clyde Kessner Memorial Bathroom will then be open for guests, librarians and otherwise.