For now, the copier make a nice decorative accessory.

Sometimes frustration can lead to something good, so I always make it a point to look for a silver lining. Here’s how it worked last Friday.

Lee and Kathleen are planning to start a new business, which we’d run out of the Hermit Haus building. Because of that, we will need another office (there’s some regulation about it). So, we knew we’d have to convert at least one, if not both of our storage areas into offices when we do the remodel. In that case, where will I keep all my seasonal decorations (only I would ask that question first)? Where will we store excess office supplies, table cloths, and stuff for the event venue?

The owner’s manual is right there to help, but we could not make it actually copy anything.

The first thing we figured out to do would be to get the old photocopier out of the storage room. It really seemed to be in good shape, once we took a look at it, so we turned it on. Boom, it turned on. Then we tried to copy something. Paper jam. Naturally. You knew THAT was coming, right?

We located the user manual and read all about the machine, checked all its delicate spots and tried again. ONE copy came out. It was faded, but it was a copy! Then it stopped working again. Lee got frustrated.

After we determined it was over a decade old, we decided the pick-up rollers weren’t doing their job, and that was beyond Lee’s troubleshooting skills. We did find out that the machine was $3K when new. I believe new machines with the basic functionality of this one are around $300.

We’ll get a new one for the new business, unless we happen to run into someone who’s a whiz at copier repair. Now, where does the fun come in?

Hermann’s Haus. It will look cute AND store our supplies securely.

The Fun Part

We then got to talking about storage and what to do about it. Lee wanted a shipping container, because they are easy to secure. I thought I might not want my wedding reception backdrop to be a shipping container.

That led us to the classic storage shed concept, so we drove over to the conveniently located storage shed place in Cameron to see how much they cost. They had quite a variety, but we soon settled on ones that looked like little cottages and had storage lofts (I just know we’ll need that). Lo and behold, there was one with a metal roof and metal sides (these deal with humidity better) that was barn red with white trim.

And it wasn’t too expensive and it could be delivered in two weeks! I got the vision to put cute curtains in the windows, add window boxes, and paint the doors just right, so from the outside it would look quite a bit like the house in the Hermit Haus logo. I see a sign above the door that says “Hermann’s Haus.” It won’t be an eyesore at all – it will be a feature!