The storage room was five or six square meters, filled with a lot of useless cardboard boxes, empty bottles, old foam boxes, and a stool with a broken leg left by the landlord.
Lin Wan was not stingy at all and threw them all out. However, she managed to save two useful basins.
The next morning, Liang Hongmei continued with her morning market business, while Lin Wan went to the business district to buy a bucket of lime and the most popular tablecloths available offline. Lin Wan chose a style featuring dark flowers on beige plastic.
Originally, she also wanted to buy a couple of nice lamps, but after looking around she didn’t find any she liked. So Lin Wan bought two ordinary 80-watt light bulbs and some wires instead.
When Lin Wan brought the items to the store, Liang Hongmei had already transformed the kitchen completely.
The kitchen was relatively simple, with two large stoves against the wall, and to the right of the stove was a wide wooden workbench. Above the workbench was a very simple wooden rack where bowls and plates were placed, and below the bench was space for coal. Further to the right was the door to the storage room, and then a large washing sink,
On the left was a window, and meals were passed out through it.
They didn’t need such large stoves for their claypot cooking.
Lin Wan soaked the lime and then hurried to the city, visiting several streets and more than ten stores before finding the small earthen stoves she wanted. The shop owner once visited the South and saw people there loved to use small stoves to stew meat and vegetables during the New Year, which tasted particularly good. So after coming back, he made some to sell in his store. The outside of the little stove was coated black, very smooth, and the stove’s teeth resembled honeycomb briquettes. It was much like a claypot cooker.
There was a special orange ceramic claypot with two handles on top of the stove, looking somewhat heavy and unattractive, but it heated quickly and was quite distinctive, especially with the two round-handled ears.
The earthen stove was two yuan each, and the ceramic claypot was one yuan and fifty cents each. Lin Wan bought eight earthen stoves and eighteen orange ceramic claypots.
The shop owner kindly added an iron bar frame to the stoves to make it easier to move them around. Lin Wan haggled with him for quite a while, and the eighteen claypots came with insulating mats. She spent just over thirty yuan in total. The shop owner helped deliver them to the store.
After everything was delivered, Lin Wan and Mom rearranged the kitchen. They removed one of the large stoves and placed it on an iron plate rack, setting the eight small stoves on top. The remaining large stove would handle boiling water.
In the storage room, Lin Wan bought two wooden racks for storing vegetables and rice.
When Lin Yinghui came home on Sunday and saw that the two had already found a storefront, he was very satisfied. He took it upon himself to handle the wall painting.
In the evening, Lin Wan used a large plastic beverage bottle and a lamp holder. She cut off the bottle’s mouth, removed the middle, leaving only the base and the top part, then combined the top and base together, and installed the lamp holder to finish the job!
The two unique large lamp decorations installed in the store had a distinctive style.
The restaurant was newly painted, the tables were covered with new plastic cloths, and the floor was cement, the whole room shining brightly under the lights.
Everything looked brand new. Two days later, their store sign was also ready. Lin Ma’s Claypot Restaurant
After the shop was cleaned up, Lin Wan didn’t rush to open. Instead, she ventilated the place for a week before opening.
Lin Yinghui specifically took a day off to help. Early in the morning, he also set off a string of firecrackers.
The new store still attracted a lot of curiosity. Especially in this era, some people rarely went out, and there was a significant difference in food between the South and North.