My husband (Ray- the company namesake) and I have been talking about starting a blog for quite a while now to chronicle our journey starting and running a business together. Our story doesn't begin with us, it actually begins with my dad. He has been what we deemed a ruthless treasure hunter for most of my life. He loved traveling and hunting for what he hoped would someday be collectibles for me to pass along to my kids. It was only the last few (five or so) years that he started talking to Ray and me about starting an antique store once we retired from teaching. Ray absolutely loved the idea. Though I didn't hate the idea of an antique store, I did have my reservations. I knew I wanted to combine my life experiences and backgrounds to do something once I retired, but I wasn't sure what.
My first career was in cosmetology, skin care, and aromatherapy. I loved this job but had a hard time being around all the chemicals all the time. I then went back to school to be a cosmetology teacher hoping to focus more on theory and skin care/aromatherapy to minimize the chemical exposure. It helped some but not enough, so I went back to school once again- this time to be a teacher with a double minor in math and chemistry. I spent the next 27 years teaching mostly reading and writing. Though it wasn't what I had planned on teaching, I truly enjoyed the rewards and challenges of teaching reading and writing.
After 27 years, I decided to retire at the end of the 2022-2023 school year. Since I was the first to retire, my dad and I started going through his treasures as I developed our website (that has been a huge learning curve). We started taking pictures of treasures and posting them while at the same time planning to build a small building on our property. (I had never realized the art of taking pictures- one of which I do NOT excel.) My dad was in construction his entire life, so we decided to build the building together. At the same time, we unfortunately found out that he had metastatic cancer. A week later, we made our first sale on the website. He passed away later that night. To honor my dad and his dreams, I was determined to move ahead with our plans.
For the next few months, I worked tirelessly on our building (I did have a company build the shell and roof it.) Everything except the electrical outside the building was completed between October and Christmas. At the same time, I continued to add items to the store website that my dad and I had already gone through. We opened our store the two weekends before Christmas using extension cords running to the house. After Christmas Ray helped to dig the trenches and run the lines to our buidling. (I loosely say helped because the closest I got to a shovel was stepping over it.)
The moment of truth had come- did I wire everything correctly (I had never wired more than a single plug and that was under the strict supervision of my dad). To our surprise and great relief everything worked except one switch that I quickly fixed. We were ready for our shop to open and that it did!
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