Today K Art and Design celebrates 18 years in business. Like many small businesses, we had humble beginnings. My first office was the basement of a rented townhouse in Centreville, Virginia with myself as the owner and only employee. Less than a year later, I gained a window when we moved to an apartment, and a co-worker of sorts when Cole was born in the fall of 2003. In 2005, my office returned to the basement, but in our new home in Culpeper. Then after a year of commuting to Arlington, Tony changed jobs to work with me full-time just before our daughter Joy was born. We shared the basement office until 2009 when we moved into the Medical Arts Building downtown.
Fifteen years of living and working in Culpeper has been a truly wonderful experience that I never could’ve planned, and I really love to plan. We had decided to move to Culpeper because we fell in the love with the charm of the preserved historic downtown while Cole enjoyed the grilled cheese at Frost Café and the playground at Yowell Meadow Park. Plus I was assured by the homebuilder that there was high speed internet access in our neighborhood!
Once we closed on the house, I joined the Culpeper Chamber of Commerce and started to attend mixers and networking groups. All of our work at this time was for customers in Northern VA, Maryland, and DC. I was hoping we might be able to do some local projects so we could feel like a part of the community, and maybe even design one of the decorative signs that we had admired hanging on the buildings on Davis Street.
Since 2005, we’ve certainly done more than a few local jobs, and it is so gratifying to see our work in use. When family and friends visit from out of state, they laugh as we take them around and point out our projects. Over the next 12 months, we’d like to share some of them with you and spotlight what 15 years in Culpeper has meant to us. We are so proud to be part of Culpeper as a business and as a family.
I am profoundly grateful to ALL of customers, near and far, for keeping us busy for 18 years.
Thank you!
~Kelly