A Perfect Place for Potters!

 

We have finally found a new home.

We've been looking for over a year for a place that has very specific qualifications.

1) Zoning! We have to be zoned for a home business with pretty liberal space allowances.

2) It had to have an outbuilding that could be easily converted to an improved amount of studio space.



 3) The house had to be nice, good bones, not a huge amount of work just to move in. We were hoping for a step up in square footage and living environment.

4) It had to be within a days drive of NJ where Rowan's aged parents live.

5) and of course price. We're potters here, not app developers with hot product :) Every dollar we make has to pass through my fingers as mud.


AND most important, there had to be a lighthouse in our back yard. Yep, no kidding...and a river of course.  OK I was kidding about it being a qualification, but I wasn't kidding that it was there!

So we found a lovely home, not jut a house, not just a place to work in Tionesta PA on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest.

There is a two car garage, the town just did a zoning expansion to allow homes in the borough to have commercial enterprises.

We're going to have a pottery in our garage.

One of our neighbors is going to make chocolate in his.

It's in a big hunting and fishing tourist area. As one neighbor said, "pretty much any middle-upper income hunting family that lives in Pittsburgh has a camp here, and they bring the whole family." So retail is certainly a possibility..especially with our Oak and Acorn line.

Moving will have to happen when the studio is ready for us. Our guy is ready to tear into it the moment the papers are signed. When the studio is ready, we'll move so there is no production time lost. We expect it will be in January.

We attended an auction at the property on Saturday 11/30 because we wanted to try to keep some of the furniture with the house and pick up a few things our much smaller house is lacking. We had an unexpected bonus of meeting some of the members of the family that previously owned the property. They were all really nice, and seemed glad to know we would be living there and not turning it into a rental unit. We love this place and I am hopeful it will become a happy home for us!