To decorate our new home, we hit the road

Our checkout counter, shown here behind the pizza shop near Richmond, Va., from which we purchased it.

The sunny, windy morning of April 13 found me, after a four-hour drive from Hershey, standing behind a pizza shop in Powhatan, Va.

I wasn’t waiting for a wood-fired pie, however. That’s too far to go even for this pizza lover.

I was there to pick up the checkout counter for Stay’s new retail store.

The irony of having a permanent home after years of peripatetic pop-ups is that to furnish it, Sara and I traveled farther than we ever have for shows.

To create the rustic, vintage and authentic vibe we were aiming for, we scoured eBay and, even more so, Facebook Marketplace. And then the work began.

Fitting in Fishtown

It started on the first Sunday in March with 200 miles round-trip to meet Elysa at a Bucks County, Pa., shopping center (we’d be driving a Honda Pilot; she’d be in a Jeep) to complete the purchase of a back-lit Schmidt’s beer sign. (And then lunch outside the Shake Shack we happened upon.)

The pilgrimage gained momentum the first weekend in April. Saturday found us in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia, backing up onto a corner sidewalk outside a yoga studio.

I had measured and measured the Pilot in the belief that this heavy, 82-inch-long cubby cabinet, described on Facebook as having originated with a general store in Lancaster, would fit (because everything fits in the Pilot; you’ll see).

After struggling to get it onto the bumper, we began the deliberate process of pushing it toward the front of the car. It appeared stuck, and the seller, sweet and super-strong Nicole, fretted that we might damage it further (it needs some mending) and not buy it.

After all that measuring, and traveling that far, I was pretty sure that it was now or never. I noticed that we were slightly off kilter and suggested we slide the piece a bit to the right.

It just fit, and with our legs pressed against the dashboard and a bungee securing the tailgate, we limped home with our treasure.

At home, we eased the piece to the ground and covered it with a tarp until I could get additional help, two days later, to move it under our covered back porch.

Maryland and Virginia

We had to empty the Pilot because Sunday had us on the road again, this time to Bethesda, Md. This was a piece of cake by one day’s comparison, seller Nikki having left a sturdy but compact former postal sorting cabinet outside of her garage. (To think we drove 122 miles to purchase something that was made in Carlisle, Pa., only 30 miles from Hershey.)

We loaded it within five minutes, paid Nikki via Venmo and never saw her.

The next Saturday was the trip to Virginia, 30 miles west of Richmond, for the checkout counter. The pizza shop had bought it but then realized it couldn’t use it, hence why it was available to me.

I fell in love with the corrugated metal on the front and sides, perfect for our space in the old milk house of a dairy farm. It’s going to make a statement when customers walk into our store.

It almost wasn’t to be when it seemed that I had goofed on the measurements. Ultimately, all we had to do was remove one of the casters to make it fit.

And so it has gone these past several months, when if we haven’t been at a show on the weekend, odds are we’ve been traveling even farther to fit out the store.

It has been a wild ride but one well worth taking. Our store at the Hershey History Center has beautiful new lights, fresh coats of paint, and is starting to fill up with our fabulous finds.

We’ll do most of the decorating on June 1 and plan to open June 6.

We’re almost home.