It's been two and a half weeks since we had the fire here at Papermaze, and life has been very busy since as we're trying hard to get things up and running again! I thought I'd bring you all up to date with what's happening and share some pictures. These were taken on the day of the fire itself. By the time the fire engines arrived the stock room was well and truly ablaze. You can see the shop in the foreground of this picture. The stock room was a lovely 17th century granary barn next door - all that remains here are a few posts.
We were lucky that the fire didn't really spread to the shop - fortunately there was a gap between the buildings which acted as a firebreak. The roof tiles were taken off by the fireman to check that the insulation wasn't smouldering.
And this is where the stock room stood :( The whole building and its contents destroyed. My husband used a digger to take loads of rubble and rubbish from this site to the field behind where the fireman hosed it down to stop it smouldering.
And here is the stock room plus several thousand scrapbook goodies scattered on the field.
Inside the shop, the plasterboard of the ceiling either fell or was taken down to get to the insulation.
The fireman moved everything down to one end of the shop...
And so the next day, the clean up operation began. The farm machinery came in very handy again!
And while the men were working here, I had some willing volunteers (friends, customers & family) who came and helped sort through the rubbish, separating paper and other items from stock room fittings.
We came across pieces we could still recognise which was quite sad. With the charred papers we played 'guess which manufacturer it is'! I think it's Echo Park here...
... and some October Afternoon...
It took a good couple of days to sort through it all, and then the field was back to normal. Remaining papers were burnt completely, metal items pulled out and the rest of the rubble went in a hole in a field! Then it was on to the shop. We moved all the shelves and products out of the shop....
.... and into the one next door, that fortunately my husband hadn't yet occupied!
And you can even see boxes of new products in the picture above, already arriving! We've sorted out everything that was in the shop, and although it's a much smaller space, we're ready to go again! So, everything is now half price!!! Yes, 50% off everything! It has obviously been exposed to smoke, but many items seem fine, even some of the papers and cardstock have survived remarkably well!! So there are plenty of bargains to be had :) The shop is not ready for customers yet, so we are only taking online orders and there is a flat postal rate of £2.75 for UK orders. We hope that most of our stock figures are right, but there may be occasions when we find we don't have items in stock, in which case we will issue refunds rather than send replacements.
We've been very touched by the numerous emails and offers of help that we've received - thank you for all your support :)
