Flawed and Fabulous.........................
aka the lovely shop

More than a name. Flawed and Fabulous was started in 1993. I was fortunate enough to gain a small space in the Swan Murray & Hain Antique Centre on the Highway in East Maitland. Sid Brown, the local auctioneer and Centre owner allowed me to start small, upstairs in an area that was to be redeveloped to host his regular antique auctions.
I asked him if I could put some things in on consignment, upstairs until he started auctioning and he said that would be Ok.
I hardly sold a thing that first month, I dragged a whole lot of little pieces that I had collected and restored out of home and set up shop.
Once I had space, I started going to his Wednesday junk sales as well as his antique sales, I put more and more to stock, and when a stall holder left downstairs Sid offered me the space.
It was great, without the hassle of having to open myself, I was able to throw myself into restoration. In time a bigger stall came up on the other side and then one towards the front door. I did well and was having a fantastic time. They were good enough to let me contra some of my auction purchases off against my sales which was great so I didn't have to wait all month to get the money to restock.
I tried to take the stall next to me as well, but that was only for a month, I had terrible sales and contracted again. They seemed happy with me as I restocked and cleaned and moved my shop around regularly.
After a while though, I wanted more control of my business and an opportunity came up to move into the next door building with some other stall holders. We moved into the back dock area much to everyone elses surprise, but after the pallet racks were removed and the floor cleaned, it wasn't bad. I lined the walls with hessian and old sacks, and made tin awnings to go over the roller doors. It had a nice rustic feel but most of all I had so much space.
I was paying a much lower rate than everyone else per square metre, and started to sell very well.
I was sorry that I ever moved a short time later. The auctioneers centre really never recovered from our mass defection, so I couldn't really move back. I ended up having huge fight with one of the other stall holders, who continually blocked the doorway with large pieces of furniture and I ended up being kicked out.
I moped around for a few months, I felt so disconnected. I jammed all my stock dowstairs in my house. I sold a few things on consignment with another friend, but they were dark days......
I looked around for a shop to lease but they were all too exspensive. In the end Nelly Bligh told me about a place that might be available. It had been a newsagent but was currently vacant. She gave me the owners name and I contacted him regarding the property. It was pretty run down and dirty, and he was more interested in selling than leasing the property.
I dragged Rod along to look and we both had our rose coloured glasses firmly in place!
Yes!!!! we'll take it!
We used the equity in our home to purchase it and we were off.
It took me three weeks just to have the rubbish cleared out. The painter had just shaken his head when he saw it. The rubbish removers took about three loads to the tip, we pulled up the ugly carpet tiles, and the Women's Weeklys up off the floor, then crawled around on our hands and knees scraping the flood mud out of the cracks in the floor. John the builder came and stripped all the random groove plywood off the walls, and we fixed the white ant damage in the windows. I found the original front doors and we refitted those, then repaired the section of shopfront that had been cut out. I got a really big long cobweb brush and brushed all the walls and ceilings, and vacuumed the floor. We finally brought the hose and scrubber polisher in and scrubbed the whole hardwood floor.
I got trevor the lovely painter back to have a look and he could finally see it's potential.
I love green and it is such a wonderful traditional colour, that I picked a heritage colour scheme centred around three greens, a cream, venetian red and carriage green.
We still retain, the original colour scheme, and interestingly, scrapings revealed that it mirrored the original colours.
We opened in october 1995 with no great fanfare as my stock looked bare in our new larger premises.
We have gradually repaired the place as we could afford to, there is still so much to be done, but it has become a wonderful home as well as shop. We started the garden in Jan 1997 and now boast some wonderfully mature Bangalow palms and a Jacarandah for shade.
In Feb 2000 the old bakery building adjacent to us, which we had been renting as a workshop became available for sale, and though we had been looking at purchasing our mirror image building next door, the purchase of the bakery became more urgent.