Pensions Disaster into cafe opportunity

I’ve been working for charities for most of my career and as you can imagine the pensions were not amazing. So I found myself in my mid forties calculating that with my 80K pension sitting on 5 different pensions I wasn’t going to get more than a couple of thousand a year on retirement.

What could have been a pension disaster turned out to be a great opportunity. Amazingly it was possible to buy a property with this that was going to give us a whole lot more than 2K a year.

We found a great little cafe in Paisley opposite the museum, just before lock down. It needed a lot of work doing to it to modernise and add our own colours and design ideas. Electrics, gas central heating, plumbing, decorating!!!!

We worked with Sarah Jane and Marianne at SJM Architects to come up with a basic plan for the main floor. They encouraged us to pay attention to the details and helped us put together a good plan for the building contractors. We looked high and low for builders - Covid really made things more complicated and slower and we had a few set backs, like when a hole was drilled in the pavement and water flooded the basement when it rained. In the end we found Faskin and Jamie and Eddie and their team helped us turn the plan into a reality.

We didn’t want something too polished and the brick work under the tired old wooden cladding was a really great surprise. We loved the travel history - the shop used to be a travel agents over 40 years ago. With travelled themed etching on the windows - a bus, plane, boat and train we decided to stick with the travel theme. That’s where the name Nomads’ came from ….

We’re about 50% there in terms our our refurb. The shop front is due to be renovated late August/early September and although it’s not that pretty on the outside (yet), we have good things to come!!!!