Dianna Strickland has scrubbed every inch of the ceilings and walls herself at the site of her bakery, coming soon to Charleston's West Side.
She flexed her bicep inside one of the rooms at Sugar & Spice Pastry Shop, located at 715 Bigley Ave.
"The walls were nearly solid black - the ceilings. We scrubbed every inch of the place," Strickland said.
While Strickland planned to have her ribbon cutting today, a few setbacks - leaky roof, broken water main, clogged sewer drains and water shooting out of sinks and toilets - have slowed her renovation process. But now, with a brand new roof, water main and sewer pipe, Strickland is ready to move full steam ahead.
"We're doing it right. We're not just patching it together," Strickland said.
She plans to be open by the first of November so she and her customers can take advantage of the holiday pie season. Strickland wants the boost to business to get the bakery through a typically slow January.
"It's a great opportunity to put pies on people's Thanksgiving table. You can touch so many people with little product," Strickland said.
Strickland hopes her bakery can be a mainstay for Charleston residents and visitors in the same way its former inhabitant was. She's occupying the same space Dutchess Bakery did until it closed in 2006.
Dutchess Bakery, which originally opened in 1941, moved to the Bigley Avenue location in 1972, where it remained until it closed in 2006.
Strickland remembers her father, a coal miner "up Cabin Creek," would bring the family doughnuts from Dutchess every Friday.
"We'd wait for him, and I guess he knew that. He knew," Strickland said.
Sugar & Spice will carry Dutchess breads, including the Grecian, pumpernickel and seeded Italian loaves. Strickland is also planning to have 20 feet - the amount of space her bake cases take up - of sweet and savory pastries, cakes and pies. A baker who once worked at Chesapeake Bagel, a former Capitol Street occupant, will make Strickland's bagels.
She also plans to have lunch fare, including soup (French onion and old fashioned chicken-and-dumplings, for certain) and deli sandwiches.
Customers can sit and stay a while if they wish in one of the 15 seats Strickland will have at the front of the shop or at the counter, she said.
Strickland said she wants to keep the business small, and once it's up and running, she'll use fruit, nuts and honey from her own farm in Sissonville. Strickland said she's working with the state Department of Agriculture to develop the 10-acre property into an orchard.
She orders King Arthur Flour direct from the company in Vermont, receives her cinnamon from Vietnam and her vanilla from Madagascar.
"I try to enhance our already wonderful ingredients with the finest products available, not just what I can get off the shelf," Strickland said.
This isn't Strickland's first rodeo as far as baking is concerned.
She owned and operated Sugar & Spice in Sissonville for about two years. But she closed the operations "after a series of catastrophes," that included the 2012 derecho, months of power outages that followed, the gas line explosion that leveled homes in Sissonville and melted part of Interstate 77, the 2014 Elk River chemical leak and a crumbling culvert.
"It wasn't minor," Strickland said. "It was major and took a huge financial hit each time both in lost product and in lost customers.
"People weren't coming."
Her time there wasn't all for naught. Strickland was able to work close to her home and her children's school. She could also learn in that first shop.
"They allowed me to make some mistakes and allowed me to learn and grow to a position where I can make this successful," she said.
Strickland hopes her shop will build more community in the city and on the West Side.
"I want to build that for the new generation," Strickland said. "I want to give them something to grow up with, something to hold on to, something old fashioned like we had."
Reach Rachel Molenda at rachel.molenda@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5102 or follow @rachelmolenda on Twitter.