Renovation eye-glazing details, which I love.

I originally intended to put the store back together exactly the way it was. For one thing, the store was working well. For another, everything slotted in exactly. I think I may have had a spare five inches on the eastern side of the store (which I used in the renovation to give a bit more space to two corner bookcases.)

Fact is, this is one of my favorite aspects of owning a store. I really enjoy working on the layout, trying to maximize the space to carry product. 

However, once all the fixtures were free floating and I was mulling how to put them back in, I realized that I could make some changes. The basic layout is the same, except for two things.

1.) I had a makeshift shelf I found in the basement that I was using for one of the graphic novel brands. It was about 5 foot wide and probably 5 foot deep, with the base extending outward to no real purpose. I realized that I could take this out, replace it was two bookcases which are only 12" deep, thereby gaining 4' of space. I'd also gain at least a couple of shelves per case. Bonus.

Meanwhile, I have two cases in the middle of the store, one of which is about a foot deeper than the other. If I switched the location of these two cases, I'd gain at least a foot of floor space for one, and probably a couple of feet of floor space for the other.

2.) The other change was that by squeezing the southwest corner by about 3 inches and taking out the poster rack I could replace all the 24" bookcases with 28" bookcases, and add one to the wall. The poster rack hasn't been very active and is only viable if I can buy posters at a discount. Marvel used to have big sales where I could stock up, but they seemed to have stopped doing that. So the rack is starting to get sparse.

I also decided to take a freestanding slatwall rack that really wasn't adding much, and take down two makeshift extensions that were obscuring the view.

So these two changes do a couple of things. One---They make the store slightly less crowded feeling, and--Two--they emphasize the book aspect of the store. Books are by far the fasted growing element of the store and this will reinforce it.

I think overall people are probably going to tell me the store feel more spacious. At least I hope so.