It's been about a week now that I wrote the post about my friend @a4xjeeper and the new project he has going on. He recently purchased an old commercial space when a local dollar store decided to close up shop. If you aren't familiar with what a dollar store is, it's basically just what it sounds like.
Back in the day, when dollar stores first came on the scene, everything in the store was in fact a dollar. Of course, you also had to pay tax depending on what state you lived in, but it was a pretty cool concept at the time, harkening back to the days of the old five and dime.
These days, although they still call them dollar stores, you will be lucky to find anything worthwhile in the store that is a dollar or less. It's a bit of a misnomer to be honest.
So yeah, this "dollar store" decided to close up shop and my buddy decided to make an offer on the building. It's interesting, because when he made the offer, he was very tight lipped about it. He told me of course, but he was trying to keep it sort of on the "down low". You see, he had tried to buy another building earlier in the year, but made the mistake of mentioning it to one of his colleagues in the local home builders association.
Long story short, the guy underbid him for the building, purchased it, and then offered to lease the space to my friend for a monthly fee. That's a pretty dick move right?
You can understand then why my friend was trying to keep things a little closer to the vest this time... For years he has been running his handyman business out of his house. A short time ago he bought a residential property in town, but he isn't able to park his trucks there. This means that his crews still have to show up to his house every morning to get their trucks and be on their way.
With the purchase of this dollar store, he is now able to keep everything under one roof. His home will be his home again and his business will have pretty much everything it needs right on site. The exception being some of the heavier excavating equipment. Because the new location is a commercial site and not an industrial site, he can't park equipment outside.
Thus the reason he wanted to tear down the wall and put some doors in so he can park the trucks inside. Plus there are the security reasons for doing so as well.
After a mess of zoning and building code red tape that I talked about in this post, he was finally able to get a crew started on bringing the wall down.
He's been sending photos to me all week on the days that they have been able to work. Unfortunately, we have been getting a lot of rain lately, so that has put them a bit behind. He also sent me some videos, but to be honest the quality was crap, so I am not going to subject you to those!
I've been in the space and it is pretty huge inside. I don't remember the exact number of square feet, but I think it is going to serve him well for his needs. He plans on having a workshop in the back, an office area for his receptionist, the place for the trucks, and then he also hopes to have a storefront one day.
Being a handyman business you might wonder what he has to sell. Well, he also has a firewood business on the side, and he wants to have some doors, windows, cabinets, and things like that in place so when people come in asking about a bathroom remodel or something simpler like new locks on their doors, he can have some options to show them.
It's been exciting following along as he has been sending me the photos. I haven't seen him in person in a while, but I can tell he is excited about all of this, but also ready to just have it done so he can move forward.
I can't wait to see what it looks like when he has everything all finished up. I have a feeling he might need to pick my brain about running some low voltage wiring for the front desks and things like that. He has another guy who helps him that is retired and has more free time than me, but I know he likes to get my opinion on things too.
As in the past, I will be including him as a beneficiary on this post given the fact that he took all of the photos. He was really excited about the idea of me writing a series of posts about this project. I just wish he could find the time to dedicate to HIVE himself, but for now, this will have to do!
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