Opening Day for The Painted Pig

WOW! Waaayyyy too long since I checked in.. my deepest apologies. If you have been following along on my Facebook and Instagram pages, you may have noticed I have opened an artisan shop. Yes, really! It’s called The Painted Pig and located in Lovettsville, VA. My business partner, Denise, and I have been working hard on the space since February and it’s taken quite a bit of our time. She’s a close friend so I’m glad to be partners with her in this venture. We are thrilled that it is finally open and I would love to share some wonderful photos of Opening Day with you!

Lovettsville has a huge Oktoberfest celebration the last full weekend in September every year so we thought that would be the perfect day to get started (because a “soft” opening with 8,000 of our closest friends is a great idea, right?!). The community has been very supportive and welcoming, it really went off without a hitch.

We were very blessed with a lot of extra help on opening day. Denise’s family came down from New York and my oldest daughter and her boyfriend came home from college for the day. Gracie and Jack even kicked in too.

I love this photo of Abbie’s boyfriend showing Jack some magic tricks in a moment of calm.

As you enter into the front room, you’ll see this feature wall. The house was originally built around 1820. The bricks are what you find under the plaster walls. They are from a process called brick nogging. Bricks were used as insulation “back in the day”. The advantages were that it was cheaper (hard to believe, right?) and rodent proof. If we wanted to restore the building perfectly we would need to cover the brick back up with plaster. It’s so beautiful though, we just can’t bring ourselves to do it.

Heading into our check out area, you would have seen this display for some stained glass, body treats, and cute tote bags.

It’s also where we have all the Shabby Paints displayed.

Then you can move down a small hallway into what use to be a garage. The bottom section of the wall has been covered with stained lattice boards and the top has newspaper pieces. It makes a great display for smaller paintings and more narrow pieces like wall decor.

The front part of that area had lots of paintings, signs, and smaller home decor pieces. Gracie made it her personal mission to show everyone who came in the “HME” letter decor. The “O” in the word Home is interchangeable. You can switch it out for an easter egg, valentine heart, turkey, Christmas tree, baseball, or any number of other wooden items.

To the right of this area is a china cabinet that has some fun glassware.

As you traveled further back, you would have seen some mantle decor:

Do you like the ceiling? We had quite the time decoupage-ing that ceiling- my neck hurt for days. It was completely worth it though- nearly everyone who comes in comments on it and seems to really like it.

Next to the mantle area was a shelf with some other home decor items.

You can laugh about how often those letters show up in the pictures if you want to… those have been our hottest sellers. That poor artisan has had to restock twice already in less than a month!

Outside we brought everything we had and spread it about.

Abbie and Gracie even collaborated on a sign to make everyone smile….

I have talked about the look in the past tense, because if you walked into the shop today, everything would look completely different and a lot of what you see sold on opening day. We had our official ribbon cutting this past Friday and you can find the fun photos from that on our Facebook page (one of them shows our good-humored mayor kissing a pig). We have an Instagram too and would love to have you check that out as well, if you’re so inclined.

I hope you liked the opening day little shop tour and you can forgive me for my absence. I have a ridiculous amount of projects to share with you and really need to find the time to get the photos edited.

What are you up to lately?! I would love to hear all about it!