Walls

We are almost in the home stretch! This weekend was filled with spackling, sanding, spackling, sanding, and then more spackling. Thanks to the help of many great friends, we prepped the walls for paint this week. The colors we chose are called dark granite, anonymous, and silver dust. They are going to complement each other wonderfully.

This upcoming week is not only filled with getting fresh paint on the walls, but with many appointments, counter installation, daycare visits, and a book reading at Chester County Books & Music Wednesday at 10:00AM. We hope you are able to visit then!

Getting To Know The Community

Along with enrolling and meeting new students, we have done many other activities to get to know the community better. We have even given back to the community in ways such as ringing the bell for the Salvation Army. We stood outside the East Bradford Acme for a couple of hours this Saturday. Although it was very cold outside, it was wonderful to see the community be so generous to such a great cause! Also, we are scheduled to read at the West Chester County Public Library this Tuesday at 1:00. We are so excited to team up with such wonderful organizations.

ATA Martial Arts has also gone through many buildout phases too. We got our rough wiring inspection completed and passed on Friday. We will soon be able to begin putting up the rest of the drywall, tile, install the counters and paint. January 2nd, our official grand opening date, is only right around the corner! We will have everyone's first class as well as uniform fittings that Friday as well as Saturday. We have already started to receive sponsors, like Brothers Pizza, who will help by donating refreshments that day! Hope to see you there.

Permits

Yesterday was the day that we have been waiting for…we got our permits to build! We are very excited to continue working on ATA’s look, but even more excited to start training students. We have already started to receive many phone calls and e-mails from families who would like more information about ATA Martial Arts. Soon we will be able to invite these families into the school and give them their first lesson on becoming a black belt!

We also introduced ourselves to a few daycares in the area today. Every daycare we met was open to having ATA Martial Arts visit their facility and show the kids the positive skills that ATA teaches. Our first daycare class is this Wednesday!

Electricity!!

Today was the first day that our electricity worked!!! We solved the 3 week mystery and it was officially turned on. Once the electricity worked, we did some more cleaning and set up a small area in the front of the school where potential students and their families can learn more about ATA Martial Arts and take an introductory lesson if they wish.

We also went to West Goshen today and introduced ourselves to the stores in a local shopping center. We scheduled a book reading of the Kung Fu Panda books for Wednesday December 17th at 10:30 at Chester County Books & Music. The ladies who worked there were very welcoming. ATA Martial Arts of West Chester has also volunteered to ring the bell for the Salvation Army on Saturday December 6th from 2 until 4 at the Bradford Acme.

Today we took a trip to the West Chester Post Office and finally got the key to our mailbox on site at Bradford Plaza. We can officially receive mail at our 658 Downingtown Pike address. How exciting!!

Halloween Night

On Halloween we did what we like to call "reverse trick-or-treating" with the help of Mr. Alvarez, Ms. Storck, and Ms. Bradley. We went to a close neighborhood, knocked on doors, and handed out information and candy. We met a lot of nice families and look forward to them visiting the school. Many people had already heard that we were coming into the area and have visited our website. The community loved the idea of "reverse trick-or-treating" and were excited to meet us. We hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween!

The Cleanout

This past weekend was very productive with the help of Mr. Boulden, Mr. Welsh, Mr. Zaborsky, Mr. Curry, and Miss Curry. In a few days work, we cleaned up all of the debris from the demolition and picked up the dance floor and the carpet that was left behind. Our flooring is now ready for zebra mat placement and tile installation.

We also framed out the offices that visitors will see to the right of the workout floor when they come in. There are five: an introduction room, a student/instructor meeting room, storage room, a personal office, and a utility closet. We are so excited that we can finally see the image of ATA West Chester!

This past weekend was also filled with meeting the managers, workers, and owners of fellow storefronts in the shopping center. They all seem to be very excited that something new, like ATA Martial Arts, is coming into Bradford Plaza. They were extremely welcoming. We look forward to building lasting relationships with the shopping center as well as the entire West Chester community.

The Demolition

Today we started demolition on the school! We got more done than was expected thanks to the help of our good friends Miss Toni, Mr. Smith, Mr M and our main contractor, Mr. Boulden (Miss Boulden's dad). After today's work, most of the walls are knocked down! It was exciting to see how big 3200 square feet really is.

We were delighted and felt very welcomed today when we saw passersby in the shopping center pop their heads in our door to see what we were up to. All who stopped by were very excited to find out that ATA Martial Arts was coming into their area!

Our goals over the next few weeks are to clean up after today's demo, post "coming soon" signs in the windows, and to introduce ourselves to households, schools, and other businesses in the surrounding area. We learned a lot today about our space and are eager to learn even more as the next few weeks pass by before we are finally open and doing what we love to do....teach martial arts and life skills!

The Beginning

Allow us to introduce ourselves. Our names are Maria Boulden and Marc Jouan and we are martial artists from Newark, Delaware. We are recently engaged to each other and are in the process of opening up our own ATA(American Taekwondo Association) martial arts school! Having an ATA martial arts school of our own has been a goal(and dream) of ours for a long time and it is finally happening! Mr. Jouan has been training in martial arts for about 20 years and Miss Boulden has been training in martial arts for about 11. We teach all ages and levels of students. Teaching martial arts is an extremely rewarding career for us because you can have the opportunity to touch so many lives. Martial arts teaches confidence, respect, discipline, fitness, and of course self-defense. For more information about us, our website is http://www.atapennsylvania.com/.

Today we got the key to the door of our building and will begin introducing ATA to the town of West Chester next week! We have a lot of work to do on the inside of the building, but hopefully once our permits are cleared we will be ready to open shortly after. To the right of the post, you will see pictures of the building before our buildout. It used to be the home of a dancing school, hence the mirrors and dance floor. We are so excited to finally start putting our vision into reality and making this ATA's home!