Pudsey Salon History

Well bit of a change in the weather these last few days. Our neighbours had three large conifer trees removed two weeks ago & we are so grateful as they were really loose at their bases & we all kept thinking they would blow over, which potentially would have caused damage to both their own & our property. Adele, one of our therapists has had a tree blow down in her garden this week, again thankfully no damage just a clear up job to do & trips to the skip for her.

So much more traffic on the roads this week & lots more people out & about too, anyone else noticed that? For anyone who is travelling on public transport – what is that like, busy, quiet, do you feel safe?

It’s been a few weeks since I had my emotional nostalgic week but I thought I would follow up with when we opened the Pudsey salon. The Farsley salon had been growing & we were really outgrowing the premises plus we had apprentices that were training with us that we did not wish to loose but had no space to be actually able to offer them positions either, so that they could accommodate clients. These people had become part of our team & trained with us for 2-3 years, letting them go, unless they wanted to didn’t seem fair in anyway & was not what we wanted. So we decided to look for a second location, to expand, creating more stylist positions & being able to create more senior/manager positions for our existing team too.

It was a crazy idea really given that Ellie had not long since been born. We initially looked at many different areas but decided on Pudsey, some people thought the salons would be too close together but when we did our research lots of people from Pudsey did not go to Farsley & vice versa. So no 65 Lidget Hill was on the market, it was a bakers/sandwich shop at the time when we went to view it. Very sadly the family had lost their mum/wife in the last year & they decided to close the business. It was a shop downstairs & a flat upstairs accessed via the shop.

As you can imagine there was lots of work to do, we initially had to have a structural engineer in to access the gable end before any work could commence. We decided to change the doorway when you walked up the stairs from the street to a single not double entrance that it was. The shop area was to be converted to accommodate the salon & the upstairs was to remain a three bedroom flat but we changed the entrance so the occupants no longer needed to go through the shop, they would have their own entrance from the yard at the back of the property. We obviously initially didn’t need the space upstairs & it made good sense to rent it out so there would be a guaranteed income coming in each month. So that is how Pudsey started.

Since then we have extended onto the back of the building initially to create rooms for beauty therapy until then the flat upstairs became empty after being occupied for seven years. The flat needed a complete renovation after so long to be able to re let it & Craig didn’t initially have the time to do it so we kind of ended up using it as storage for a while. After four months of it being empty & us realising we could manage without the rent Craig’s bright idea was to alter the entrance back into the shop again , taking all beauty services upstairs & extending hairdressing downstairs, he likes a challenge & a project!! So that’s what happened & that’s where we are now. 99% of the ideas for expansion & changing things around come from Craig, as I say he likes a challenge & has always had to have a project on the go. Reading this back to myself it all seems like it was so simple but like moving home nothing ever goes completely according to plan, there were a number of challenges along the way but we learn from each of them thankfully. And like most times/events in your life when you think back on them they seem like only yesterday & once again we could not have achieved any of it without the support from our family, friends & teams that have worked with us over the years, though Craig comes up with the ideas without these people in our lives none of it would have been possible.

On the family side we arranged another get together via Zoom this week, it’s always great to see your family but especially when my nephew in Cardiff, my niece in New Zealand & Ellie in New York can all join in at the same time with us all in the UK, it makes it extra special, we were all chatting for nearly two hours, putting the world to rites like you do & catching up for another week with each other.

So to end this week, we are slowly working our way through contacting any clients with appointments to the end of June. This is taking longer than when we have done this before as we need to be aware of the potential restrictions that maybe in place when we do re open – social distancing, only a certain amount of people allowed in the space at any one time etc . Please bear with us if we have not contacted you yet, we will & to those of you on our wait list, as soon as we have confirmed information we will be in touch.

For now, have a great week everyone. Take care & stay safe. Lynn x