McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: new location (Page 1 of 2)

Getting to the point. Eventually.

March 26, 2012 / / 2 Comments

March is winding down and the store is still in the prep-stage. There remains a remote possibility that the grand re-opening will make an April 1 deadline, but it may take just a while longer to move all those boxes of books and get them resettled.

In the meantime, the work carries on assembling the shelves from the old store. More than 25 bookcases were pushed, pulled, dragged, and carried by my wife and me, from one of the storage units to the store on Sunday and were organized on Monday morning. The picture shows the line of cases from the front to the back of the store interior.

Monday afternoon – after bringing the shelves and supports from storage – the wall units were assembled along the south wall. They came apart a lot easier than they went back together. (I had taken the trouble to mark each shelf and matching support, but upon reassembly decided they were all constructed to match and disregarded my identifying marks. They don’t all match. Therein lies the difficulty.

At last, the wall is full of shelves from the bistro-tables-area in the front of the store leading to the back of the sales area. By Wednesday, the north wall shelving should be completed as well. There are a couple of interim projects between now and then.

The outside of the store is looking good and will look better once there is time enough to get the windows washed and cleaned. A little shelf on the front window bench will do nicely to display some new titles. (I’ve placed The Hunger Games in trade paper and a special boxed-edition copy on display, along with a boxed set of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, which I have not read, but have enjoyed on television.)

Once the shelves and cases were removed from the storage unit, I was able to see the boxes of books that were hidden behind. It’s a bit misleading to say they were hidden though – sort of like saying a tsunami snuck in. There are almost exactly a thousand boxes waiting to be unpacked, and when the last couple of bookcases were moved out of the way, stacks and stacks and stacks of boxes were revealed.

An imposing sight, to say the least.

It is exciting though, the idea of getting those books on the shelves and ready to go.

Let the Books begin: McHuston Booksellers on Main.

March 13, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Let the work finally begin.

Not that there hasn’t been a lot of that going on already, at the site of the former Francy Law Firm on Main Street. It’s just that the work from this point forward is a different kind.

There won’t be professional carpenters, contractors, plumbers, and HVAC workers. Just me. And the volunteers. And there aren’t many of those.

But that’s okay.

It’s been a labor of love all along, running the bookstore in Broken Arrow. The book industry is changing almost every day, what with electronic readers, authors posting chapters in their online blogs, store closings, and a general decline in reading habits. There are still plenty of things being read, but a lot of the reading is online: blogs, websites, tweets, news aggregators, and Facebook updates.

That piece of paper, the final page of a small stack of numbered papers, has my signature on it. The lease is signed, and the official okay to begin moving items into the new location has been given, as of Tuesday, March 12, 2012.

That’s just shy of five months since receiving the official heave-ho notice from the previous landlord, who declined to provide a month-to-month rental arrangement to allow the bookstore to remain in operation until the new location was completed.

No hard feelings.

It just amounts to more work, moving for a second time those items carried into storage five months ago. And that work begins Tuesday.

Well, in all honesty – it could. Due to the timing, it won’t really get started until Wednesday to avoid a scheduling conflict – of all things.

Then, the shelves may be hauled out of the church where they’ve been stashed, to be reconstructed in the new location.

Books to follow that – but, all things in due time.

Let’s get the shelves rebuilt first. In the meantime, I snapped a couple of pictures of the exterior on my way back from signing the lease, showing the brick front without awning, and the trusty old Firebird parked in front. Click for a bigger view.

PS. The old Pontiac doesn’t look too bad for 16 years on the road, eh?

An update with photo.

March 7, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I’ve run into more people in the past few days than I have in the past four months – asking about the bookstore and its current status. It’s a pleasure being asked, and I only wish that I could run into every first-time, occasional, or regular customer to give a personal update. I know there are some folks who likely believe the store folded up the tent. Not true!

We’ve moved into March and are about a week out from St. Paddy’s Day, another calendar date I had hoped would find McHuston Booksellers ready-stocked and open for business. I’m doubtful that date can be met, as the occupancy of the new building has not been green-lighted.

From the photo, taken from the sidewalk and looking in through the front windows, you can see that the building has every appearance of completion, looking in through the front windows. There are a couple of things that are apparent, such as the front awning, which has seen the frame installed, but not the canvas.

The interior is a beautiful thing to see – high-ceilinged, suspended light fixtures, wood centerline columns with counter-height desks. The tile floor has the appearance of wooden planks, but will be so much easier to care for.

As noted in an earlier post, shelves have been acquired from a now-closed Tulsa bookstore that originated at the Novel Idea location of so many years ago. Those, and another set that came from a Barnes & Nobel location, are currently hiding in my sister’s church until the official go-ahead is signaled (with immense thanks to her and her pastor).

Books are still being acquired, although – without immediately shelving on which to house them – the purchases are quite a bit more selective. It will not be too long now before the shelves can be reassembled and the books restored.

To answer the question, though – I can’t say with any assuredness the exact date. The building looks finished to me, but then, I’m no contractor and I don’t know the process. Inspections and such are out of the control of everyone except the inspector. I hope they’ll be wrapped up in the next week or so and permission to move in will be granted.

In the meantime, behind the scenes work continues!

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