Rolling with the Punches: Something New for Paper & Stitch (Again)

I hinted at this a while back, but wasn’t ready to share the specifics. Wanted to make sure everything went through before saying anything. But today, its full steam ahead! No looking back because….

We’re moving AGAIN. Today! If you follow me on Snapchat, you saw my announcement there yesterday. But for everyone else, this may seem a bit out of left field. And it is! It totally is. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned after almost eight years in business, it’s that things will (seemingly) come out of left field often and you just have to roll with and hope to catch the ball.

That said, here’s what happened…

I moved into the first P&S studio space back in October and I was SO excited! It was really, really nice to have a space completely separate form my house where everyone could meet up and we could work from (without the distractions of working from home and the super cute animals), etc. I had LOTS of plans for what I wanted to do with the space too…renovate the kitchen and bathrooms, redo the floors, paint the ceiling, drywall over the cinder block in the areas that weren’t already drywalled, etc, etc. And then, when it finally came to doing all of those things (AKA forking over the money to have it done professionally…I mean I DIY, but I don’t do drywall or flooring), I had some serious sticker shock. In the interest of keeping it real, and in case you’re curious, the quote was $22,000! And that didn’t even include the kitchen or bathroom renos. Ugh!

Here are some photos of the old space, to give you an idea of the work that needed to be done…

Do I have the money for said renovation? Technically yes, but do I want to spend that kind of money on a place that I don’t own? Well, that depends. Could I ultimately stay in the space for a long enough time to make it worth it (aka years). Well, yeah, I guess I could. But did I want to? That was what I really had to think about.

So, after the quote, it was time for a little soul-searching. I ran those questions through my head over and over again. If I go through with these renovations will they make everything magically wonderful? If so, maybe it would be worth it. I like the location and the fact that it’s a free-standing building, etc, etc.

But after really, REALLY thinking about my answers to those questions, the only thing I came up with over and over again was NO. Even if I spent all that money on renovations, I still wouldn’t have exactly what I was looking for. Because the biggest problem I had with the space was (dun, dun, dun) the natural light. As in…no matter how hard I tried… there would never be enough. 🙁

And that’s a big problem when 90% of your business relies on you being able to take alway decent natural light photos.

Don’t get me wrong, this first space was a great first step, getting my work out of the house and all, but once we got in, we very quickly realized that light was an issue. Which meant we had to shoot all of the blog photos in a very small area of the space toward the front (that still had issues) and not ever being able to show the entirety of the space because the photos just never looked as good as I would want them to be. Especially since I hadn’t done the renovations yet.

SO, on a whim, I went and looked at a space right down the street (literally two blocks away) and immediately realized we had to move. I was really nervous about it. And honestly wished that it wasn’t necessary. But I just knew it was the right decision. So, I broke the lease at the old place. Signed a lease on the new place. And here we are!

So, yes – it’s all very exciting and scary and awesome and ever-changing. But it feels good to continue moving Paper & Stitch in the direction I want to go, even if it was a considerably inconvenient choice to make.

The reason I mention all this (in great detail) though is because I feel like there was a lesson here, for me at least. You can’t stay somewhere (figuratively), in life, just because you’ve already settled in and unpacked all of your boxes. If you want to keep moving, there is no time for settling. Right?

So, now that you’ve read through this novel (thank you), I want to hear from you….What are some obstacles that you’ve been facing recently that you have overcome? How did you make the decision to make a change?

Photography by Amelia Tatnall