Our Story

It begins like this. We're probably a day from signing a lease for a retail space in a Safeway strip mall. Certainly nothing wrong with having a retail store in a strip mall, but it wasn't what we wanted for our bookshop. We dreamed of having that neighborhood shop where people (and their dogs) could wander in and feel at home. We wanted to be an integral part of the community. And we just couldn't see that happening at the strip mall. So after weeks of lease negotiations and attorney conferences between tenant and landlord, with pen almost literally poised over paper, we backed out of the deal.

You see, the day before (or thereabouts) Shannon found this on the Great Big InterWeb:

We dug the outside. Loved the brick and the age of the place. The inside, however, was a different story:

But we saw potential:

So we went to work:

With a little help from our friends:

The addition of a tree (thanks Sherryl and Randy!) and a dog bowl:

We were on the verge of something pretty cool:

Then with the delivery of a few books:

And our awnings:

We suddenly had a bookshop:

From this:

To this:

And from this:

To finally this: