A butchery to a gift store: Gravelly Beach shop gets a new lease on life

After sitting empty for the past two years, Karen Bugelli and her husband purchased the storefront in January. The actual renovations only took around a month to complete.

Mrs Bugelli and her husband did most of the renovations themselves with some professional help.

"We found an old building that needed life," Mrs Bugelli said.

"It was just what I was looking for, such a quaint space [but it] just needed prettying up," she said.

"We kept the footprint of the building, which used to be an old butcher shop and a pizza store under several owners, and it's been empty for a couple of years now.

"Without doing any major work, I just kept the old door and windows, painted and put a new floor down."

After conceptualising and renovating the building, Mrs Bugelli's store - My Tasmanian Home - opened its doors for trade a week ago.

She decided to open a store after products from her own brand-also called My Tasmanian Home-began to take up too much space.

"I was just doing it from home and needed more space because it was taking over my house, so that was the idea," she said.

"That started a year ago, and I wholesale to all the airports in Australia now."

Located on Gravelly Beach road, Mrs Bugelli hopes that her store, and others on the road, will "create more of a village".

"It's just bringing a lot of people in," she said.

"I hope the momentum will keep going and it will become a destination store for Launceston people and further afield."

Though the store has only been open a short while, Mrs Bugelli said she's already reaching her monetary goals.

"I set myself a budget each day of what I want to achieve, and [it's] gone way beyond that."

Mrs Bugelli said it was "incredibly rewarding to see the final result and the positive impact it has on the community and the wider community".

Despite being located in a relatively small community, she said she isn't worried about attracting customers or business being slow - what she has invested into her idea will come back around.

"Build it and people will come," she said.

"You've got to have faith...you've got to have a vision."

My Tasmanian Home, located at 293 Gravelly Beach Road, Gravelly Beach, is open Wednesday to Sunday 10am-3pm.