Movin' On Up To The East Side

As the CFO of Booth 366, the company co-owned by Gary and I, I am pleased to announce our expansion to a larger booth within the Southern Crossing Antique Mall in Jacksonville Florida. We just completed our second month in the antiques and collectibles business, and things have been going REALLY well. The dealer that was previously in our new booth outgrew it, and moved to a larger booth herself. That left her booth available at just the right moment when we were thinking of moving to somewhere larger, so we decided to go for it. The new booth is just a few feet east of our old booth, and yes, we will retain our Booth 366 name. That will stay with us no matter where we go. Our original booth was great, but we simply needed more room, especially floor space. Although our new booth isn't as large as many within the mall, it's the next progressive step as we learn the ropes. We went from one shelf unit to two, at least 6 times more floor space, and we've got a wall large enough to accommodate a full 4x8 sheet of pegboard. This move was sudden, so Gary still has to take the pegboard up and anchor it to the wall. But once it's up, that will give us more room on the shelves for more items. Now all we have to do is sell even more than we have previously to cover the additional cost of the larger booth. Being the Chief Financial Officer, I guess I am more concerned with the money aspect of the business than Gary is, but we will work closely together to make this a success. Neither of us can complain with how things have gone so far. This is SO much fun! We will no doubt stay where we're at for quite some time, but if anything changes, I'll let you know. Stop by Booth 366, and BUY BUY BUY!!!

The Spartan Imperial Mansion

While at an estate sale last weekend, Gary discovered this 1955 43ft Spartan Imperial Mansion travel trailer in the back yard of the house that was having the sale. He took these pictures, and then inquired about it. The trailer is owned by someone other than the family that owns the house. After repeated attempts by them to reach the trailer's owner, he has not responded. The house will be going back to the bank that holds the mortgage on it, so the Spartan's future may be in peril. As you know, Gary is a sucker for old travel trailers. He's never paid much attention to large trailers before, but this one has really caught his interest. He is hoping to acquire it, but due to the circumstances, it may be difficult. The Spartan is currently being used for storage. It is packed full from front to back with junk of all kinds. During a second visit to look it over, Gary managed to get inside. The interior of the Spartan apparently is pretty pathetic. While the kitchen remains intact, minus the refrigerator, the bathroom no longer exists. Various leaks have taken their toll on the once beautiful birch plywood ceilings and walls. Gary tells me that the smell of rat urine is overwhelming. I'll take his word on that, as I don't care to ever experience anything so gross. The cigarette and dog smells and nicotine covered walls inside of me was bad enough. Gary wouldn't touch anything inside my interior when he first brought me home without latex gloves. If he gets this Spartan, he will probably be investing in a haz-mat suit. The exterior of the Spartan is pretty decent, with the exception of a large dent in the right front corner. One door has some damage in the door lock area, and there are a few broken or missing windows. All of that is fixable. The trailers is most definitely restorable, but it would cost a fortune to do so. If, and that's a BIG if, it is brought here to Green Acres, Gary plans to park it and use it for storage. A lot of cleaning and weatherproofing will be necessary first, of course. It's possible that Gary may someday restore the Spartan. But, with all he has to do, and a bunch of Scotty trailers already here and waiting for rebuilds or renovations, the Spartan would have a VERY long wait. Just getting the 8,000 pound Spartan here would be a MAJOR job. There's a lot to consider, and I hope that Gary thinks things over carefully before he jumps into this. At this point, it's hard to say what will happen. Time will tell, and I will update you on this subject as things progress. That's the latest news.

Seven Years!

Hello! There is plenty of activity here at the Green Acres Garage, but I'm not involved in much of it. As usual, my buddy Gary is as busy as he can possibly be, while I sit idly by and watch. I occasionally make suggestions, but beyond that, I watch TV all day and take naps. Such a life! While Gary has been too busy to acknowledge the occasion, I just had to post about my 7th year anniversary as an adopted member of Gary's family. On June 8th 2009, Gary bought me. I'm still not sure why he did, but I will be forever grateful. When I thought about creating this post, I was going to include a few pictures from each year of my life here in St. Augustine. But you've already seen WAY too many pictures of me, so I decided to just include a copy of the original Craigslist ad where Gary found me, and one of me (the way I look now) and the Green Acres Garage, my home sweet home. Sometimes lesser is better. Vintage travel trailers like myself have gotten more and more expensive since Gary bought me. I was quite a deal for $250, if I do say so myself. And the fact that I can talk, well heck, that makes me PRICELESS!!! Many thanks to Gary for finding me and saving my life, to my buddy "Dodge" for towing me everywhere I've needed to go, and for all the great things that have come my way since I've been living here. And a special thank you to all of my blog readers who have suffered through my endless babbling, yet keep on coming back for more. You're AWESOME!!!

Booth 366: A Toaster Enterprises Company

Well, here's something you probably didn't expect. Gary and I are now officially antique dealers. After much discussion, we decided to get into the antique business on a small scale, by renting a booth at Southern Crossing Antique Mall in the Riverside area of Jacksonville Florida. Everything under the blue awnings you see in the first picture I posted, is the storefront for Southern Crossing. It has always been Gary's favorite mall in northeast Florida, with MANY dealers and a VERY eclectic mix of goods. Every time that he's been there in the past, he has always come home with something interesting. Prices in general are low there, and the turnover of goods is fast. If you visited the mall on a monthly basis, you likely wouldn't see the same things that you saw during your previous visit. If we were going to try the antique business, this is exactly where we wanted to be. Gary inquired about renting a space, and the white shelf unit shown in the second picture was going to be available at the beginning of May. The owner actually let Gary set up shop a few days early, and three items sold before he left the store. He's gone up to re-stock the booth twice, and will go up again this week. Things have sold briskly at this point, and far beyond our expectations. If things continue to go well, we will likely expand to a larger booth when one becomes available. We have some larger items to sell that simply will not fit inside the small booth we currently have. We didn't want to get in over our heads at first, so this smaller booth was a great place to start. Since we love Route 66 so much, we wanted the number 66 as our booth number. Someone else already had that number, so we chose 366 instead. In order to make the plain white booth fit a bit more to our personalities, Gary built the rusty metal shelf topper (we LOVE rust!) here at home, and took it up to cap off the booth. We like the way it came out. The Booth 366 sign was made out of a short piece of broken old fence board. As you can tell, Gary throws NOTHING away. I used to complain about that, but now I see alternative usefulness in almost everything. Re-purposing is FUN!!! Although Gary does most of the work where Booth 366 is concerned, a joint company was formed between Gary and myself called Toaster Enterprises. I am financially involved, as the weekly allowance that I used to get is now going into buying goods to re-sell. I missed spending my money shopping on eBay and Amazon at first, but now I'm having even more fun by seeing what Gary buys to re-stock our booth with. In the long run, I'm sure that I will get a more than fair return on my investment. The remaining pictures I posted are what Booth 366 initially looked like when Gary set it up. Many of the items pictured have been sold and replaced with new items. A Facebook page was created especially for the purpose of showcasing our cool finds. You will find close-up pictures of each item, and prices too. Check out Booth 366 on Facebook, and please "Like" our page. We will answer any questions in a timely manner, and we thank you in advance for your interest. I know I haven't posted much lately, but there really hasn't been anything going on around here that I've been involved with. I continue to count the days until our fall camping season begins in October (134 days as of right now), and I'm waiting on a driveway to be built that leads to the new Green Acres Carport. Gary promised me that we will camp under the new carport as soon as a driveway is completed, and I'm looking forward to some fresh air and seeing something besides the four walls of the Green Acres Garage. It's going to be a long and hot Florida summer. UGH!!! Until next time, this is Toaster, the CFO of the newly formed Toaster Enterprises, wishing you good health, happy camping, and lots of free time to go antique shopping. And if you're in Jacksonville Florida, stop by Southern Crossing Antique Mall and especially Booth 366. I think you'll LOVE it!

Big Projects, Big Results

I know I haven't posted very often recently, but things have been a bit hectic here at Green Acres. While the physical labor part of the happenings around here is not in my job description, I have been on my best behavior and trying not to nag Gary while he's been so busy. It's hard for me to be a quiet little camper. If you read my blog very often, you KNOW I talk a lot, and if I talk this much with people around the world that I haven't even met, can you imagine how tired that Gary must get from hearing my endless jabber? Why he loves me so much, I will never understand, but I'm SO glad he does. When I came here in the summer of 2009, the Green Acres Garage had already been built. Seeing something created from literally the ground up is something I had never experienced. I wasn't sure if I'd ever know what that was like. We cut our camping season short this year, so that Gary could get some things done. One of the things he wanted to accomplish was to have a carport built. Because of all of the junk that Gary stores inside the garage, there is no longer any place to do any work that is under a roof. I feel a bit guilty because I take up part of the garage space myself. My sister Poppy is also in the garage. There's also a car and a van. You get the picture. There's only so much available work space. In early March, Gary got serious about the carport becoming reality. He planned where to put it and what size it should be. He talked with a company that sells carports and utility sheds, and got all the needed information to make an educated decision. He talked with our neighbor Mike, who happens to do concrete work. He even bounced a few ideas off me, and I was thrilled to have a say so in the master plan. The decision was made to put the carport directly behind the garage, and to make it the same width as the garage. There was a 30 foot square carport available to buy, and that would be perfect for the available space. A deposit was put down on the carport, and the building permit was ordered from the county. But first things first. There were some tall trees on the lot line that were dangerously close to the back of the garage. There were others that would become a problem when they grew larger. All of those were cut down. Gary cut them into small pieces and hauled many loads to the driveway. Neighbors picked every single piece up for use as firewood. After the trees were gone, the next step was to have some fill dirt brought in to level the area behind the garage. It tapered down to a trough that would fill up with water even after a moderate amount of rain, and it had always been a problem area. Seven loads of dirt was delivered. Six were dropped off behind the garage, and one in front of it to fill in some low areas there. Mike the concrete guy knows Leon the tractor guy, so Leon came by and spread the dirt. He got it pretty level where the carport was going to be located, making Mike's job easier when it was time to install the forms for the concrete slab. And that was the next thing on the agenda. Mike and his son Jamie installed the forms for the concrete, dug the required footers, and installed the rebar and wire mesh for reinforcement. The following week, Mike and Jamie, along with Mike's buddy Dale, were here to do the concrete work. Two trucks delivered the concrete. Mike had said that there may be a little left over concrete, so Gary built a 3 foot square form in front of each of the walk-in doors on the garage to take advantage of any excess. The concrete was poured and smoothed, and yes, there was just enough excess concrete left in the second truck to pour the pads that Gary had formed up. Perfect! Everything worked out great, and luckily, the high chances of rain that were predicted were wrong. The day the concrete got poured, the carport was officially ordered, and it arrived about two weeks later. A crew of four assembled the entire thing in about four hours flat. Amazing! The carport turned out even better than I imagined, and I finally got to experience the building process from the ground up. It was SO much fun! Gary is officially broke, so nothing else expensive will happen here until he gets some more money. There will be a driveway built for sure, but I've been sworn to secrecy beyond that. That said, I'm signing off and keeping my big mouth shut! I hope you'll enjoy the pictures of this AWESOME project. Later, y'all.