A New Beginning

Good morning everyone, it is a beautiful day here today. I am sitting here trying to figure out where to begin first. It has been a long week and I am so far behind in answering emails and Facebook messages so I thought maybe I should begin here. It is the easiest way to inform many people at the same time. I do however apologize. If you have sent me a message and I have not answered you I am so sorry. I will eventually work my way thru them all. Thanks to the help of my family, friends and neighbors we attempted to salvedge several hundred of the molds from the fire but it is hopeless. There is no way we can clean all these molds, the fire smell is too intensive and the damage too extensive, so Saturday morning they will all be reloaded and taken to the dump. We have to start over again from the beginning, there is no way to begin this process in the middle. Here are a few more photos from the fire and then we will begin the rebuilding process of putting my greenware business back together.

This was a boat to the left of my unit.

I also had a boat to the right of my unit.

A view from the back side.

Another back side view.

These molds took on intense heat, amazing they are still standing.

Another view from the back. That is me standing by the truck.

This 1960 Corvette was owned by someone that had had it since he was a teenager. I have heard it wasn't insured.

When they were trying to put out the fire, and excavator was used to find the hot spots so hence all the walls and doors were removed.

We did manage to save a few of the metal shelving units. Dennis has taken them to the car wash to try to get the soot off. The shelves were ruined but metal frames were still good. Hopefully we will be able to remove the smell from them.

A distance view to the right side of my unit.



This shelving unit of molds was pushed with the excavator and dumped two units away from me.

Dennis and I have thought long and hard for several days now, as to how do we begin again to build the massive selection of molds that we had built over the last 33 years. It probably would be easier to just throw in the towel and forget that part of our business, but as I watched Dennis try so hard to save any little mold  he thought he might have a chance to save, I knew this doll business was in his blood as much as it is in mine. He is the pourer, not me, every piece of sfgw that has ever left this shop has been expertly poured by him. I had always thought we would probably do this, until the day came we physically couldn't do it anymore. Now, I know that is the case. We will continue to provide expert quality doll greenware until we can no more. We have met so many wonderful people over the last 33 years, many of them became our closest friends, and many of those are no longer with us. We just cannot imagine our lives without the opportunity to know the future customers that may also become our good friends. So we will start with a new beginning here. Don't forget we are not moldless. We did have a few molds in Dennis's pouring room at the time of the fire and we also have my daughter's garage full of molds that my friend Marilyn had given me last month. (Thank God For That!!) My friend Jan is coming Saturday night to help me Sunday and Monday try to get a new catalog started. We will be starting to do an inventory of the molds still in the pouring room and the garage full of Marilyn's molds. So hopefully by next weekend I will at least have the start of a catalog of what is available. Also thanks to several generous donations of mold collections that we will have to go pick up, within a couple months, we should have an excellant selection of sfgw available again.

Our next step is where do we put them??? We no longer have a storage unit and the shop is full. I guess Dennis's garage is the next choice, (it has never seen a car parked in it anyway since it was built in 1986). We also did just get a new roof on it two weeks ago, (it had been leaking the last couple years) so I guess that is where we will start. But, oh my the cleaning that we will need to do.

We also have another option we are exploring of turning our old greenhouse that is between our shop and house into mold storage. That will entail putting on a new roof instead of the greenhouse panels, removing the built in flower beds inside with hundreds of landscaping blocks and removing several tons of soil. (Easy job, right?) Then that actually would connect to Dennis's pouring room. He could cut out a window of his pouring room and put in a door that would connect to the mold room. It is large, 14 foot by 40 foot inside there and would actually give me room for greenware storage inside there also. It already has a cement floor. It was an old patio that was between our house and shop. I will post pictures soon as we figure out what we are doing. It will have to be cleaned out also. All my extra pots and garden things are stored inside there.

So this weekend begins the start of rebuilding our massive mold selection. It is a daunting task but one I know we can accomplish with the help of our family, friends and neighbors. Here is some photos of the molds from my friend Marilyn that we will start to inventory this weekend. So here is to new beginnings!!! Have a great weekend everyone! Connie