Front Door, Bathroom Sink, Ceiling Fans, Water Heater, & More Kid Entertainment

Things are starting to come together!
As always, I have tons of pictures that need to be posted (yes, I'm back to snapping) and if you've driven down Main Street recently, you'll know that I'm far behind with posting (as usual).

Before I get to the miscellaneous pictures, I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to stop by and see, or simply comment on, our progress. All comments about the new roof and door have been positive -except for one and I think it's safe to assume the guy who thought a green or purple front door would compliment the red roof was joking.

If you haven't driven by lately, the front door is where it's supposed to be now.
And I don't have a picture of it.
I do, however, have this picture of it when it was inside -before installation:



The bathroom sink is actually in the kitchen right now (until the plumbing is finished in the bathroom):



The ceiling fans are on the floor. Or at least in this next picture they are. We've made progress since this picture, too, and they are on the ceiling and functioning (and they look great)!



I hauled the water heater in my kid-mobile. It had to wear a seat belt just like everyone else:



And the kids are building a whole new family (complete with dog and gorilla, though the gorilla didn't make it into this picture):



We are still on track to open in September.
We feel the same anticipation as the person who, while driving past this morning, hollered out the window, "Where's my Coffee?"
We're getting very, very close!

Sidewalk Warning

This is old news, but it's funny enough to revisit...

I love digital cameras for many reasons, but automatically dated photo files have to be one of the major advantages.
I'm one of those people, before digital photography, who developed a roll of film, looked at the pictures, and then dumped them into a box with the intention of putting them into a photo album at some future, unspecified time. That future, unspecified time never seemed to arrive, and I added to my intentions with thoughts of flawless chronology and scrap-booking artistry, which, of course, only pushed that elusive unspecified time further into the future.
Ha!
And then enter the digital camera. Pictures are automatically developed as soon as I upload them so I can look and dump even more quickly. Only instead of into a box, I dump them into a virtual file folder, so I'm not collecting dust and taking up space (or not much) and I feel much more organized because of it. AND the picture automatically tells me when it was taken so that my dreams of flawless chronology have finally come true!
So, for that reason alone, I am able to say that this picture was taken in April, almost exactly three months ago:

It's Dozer's finger pointing at a crack in the sidewalk.
Why?
Well, before I get to that, I should point out the white crud on the fingernail and knuckle.
It's drywall mud.
Prior to automatic picture dating, I would have looked at the drywall mud on the little hand in this picture and then tried to figure out the approximate time period of drywall mudding and at which stage I would have welcomed help from the kids and then used that information to figure out when this picture was taken.
Not very efficient, huh? (I hope I'm not the only one who does stupid stuff like that).

He's pointing at an ant house.
It doesn't qualify as an ant hill, because it's not big enough, so the kids named it the ant house.
Actually, there are two entrances (or an entrance and an exit?) and they did a good job of drawing attention to the two holes with sidewalk chalk:

"Watch out for Ant homes."
This message was intended to deter pedestrians from unknowingly stepping on the ants.

With arrows added for clarity:


And then they decided that the little ants needed some help with their food supply:


Potato chips and sandwich crusts.



The care, feeding, and observation of these ants kept both Dozer and Screech occupied for most of the day.
Of course, I got to watch for a while, too, and I have to say that it is very satisfying and fascinating to sit on the sidewalk and watch those tiny little critters team up and tear up hunks of food into pieces that will fit into their ant home.

So, don't forget, "Please be nice to ants:"


Update:
Now that summer is here and the sun is hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, the ants are nowhere to be found and the kids have been forced to find other forms of entertainment....

Summertime Sky

M snapped these pictures in the parking lot. The sun was on its way down and we had stopped working and begun to clean up:

Tourism

Blogger's photo upload isn't working right now, so this post isn't what I thought it was....

Over at MKStover.com, I've been posting about my trip to Oregon.
I went to Oregon for a Coffee Business/Barista Training and took a gazillion pictures of neat things.
Mainly, I was interested in the little town and its history and attractions because Grafton has the potential to be a major tourist attraction (International Mother's Day Shrine, The B&O Railroad Heritage Center, Tygart Lake, Grafton National Cemetery, The West Virginia National Cemetery, and more - see The Taylor County West Virginia site for links and info) and it's good to see other places who have made that potential a reality. Grafton has made major strides towards realizing this economic foundation and I like to think I'm helping it along a little bit.
As a matter of fact, I've been posting so much about the little Oregon town that I have not even touched on the Coffee side of the trip; I plan to, but not in depth. Instead, you'll have to visit us when we open and taste for yourself.

Front Window(s)

All the pictures I took of the inside front wall have been marred by the two blocks at the bottom of the old windows. (Sorry, I'm too lazy to link it to an old post right now - you can find it if you look, or let me know you're interested and I'll find it. It probably took me as long to write this as it would have to go find it and link it...)
On July 4th, the blocks were removed and the window was installed. Actually, it's windows, plural, as it made more sense cost-wise and headache-wise (trying to find that large of a window that opened the way we wanted, etc.) to install two smaller windows.

Here's the hole in the wall:

Notice the wet tile. I was just finishing up with the grout.

Here's another view (with the tile again):



Outside, on the sidewalk:


And check this out:

See the thin layer of face brick? That's the new stuff that was applied to the blockwork to make the outside look good. I'm not sure when that was done, but mid-80s is a good guess. What a difference in building technique from the three-bricks-thick-interlocking method of the 1890s!








I can't resist another shot of the tile (it looks pretty good, huh?):

Concrete (How many posts about concrete does this make now?)

These pictures are from a couple of weekends ago when we poured the slab right in front of the main door, underneath the overhang, so that I could tile the entryway right up to it (the outermost tile being underneath the threshold of the door -if the door ever makes it here).






See the 2x4 in this picture? We used that to drag along the top of the form boards to get the right amount of concrete and to begin to smooth it off:



The "Energy Shield" in this picture is really a 'Concrete Shield' to keep the concrete from splashing back onto the tile that was already laid inside:


This is the next step to smoothing out:



And this long handled, huge tool is called a 'bull float.' Because it's big? And floaty on wet concrete? I guess so (that would be the scientific explanation):




And we poured a run down the side of the building, too. It's looking pretty mucky in this picture:



But it's starting to shape up here:


Most All of this concrete pouring has to do with water control. Old buildings stay in good shape when you take care of them; that's what we want.

Quick catch-up post

I worked all weekend at The 123 as usual, but I caught myself not taking pictures.
I have become the "Wait! Let me get a picture of that!" person recently, so not taking pictures is a cause for concern.
Why?
Because I realized that not taking pictures is a small way of saving myself some work. More to the point, it's a way of not feeling like I'm so far behind with this blog.
Lame, huh?
I still didn't take any pictures.
But I did send M around with the camera a couple of times and there are plenty of end-product pictures I can still snap that will represent this past weekend.
So, this week I will make an effort to post several times, even if the posts are mostly pictures.
And today I will take more pictures.

The HVAC system installation starts today; it should be complete by Wednesday.
Now if I could just figure out what happened to the front door...

Phase III and more about the tile...

Blogging has taken a back seat to Phase III: Preparing to Open.
[D, my multi-tasking abilities are stretched to the limit ;). ]

Tiling the floor was a glamorous job:


Now that it's finished (yes, and grouted, too), I find myself in an odd phase of tying up loose construction ends and beginning the process of papering/supplying the Coffee House into reality.

I'll try to avoid the nuts-and-bolts boring parts of paper (business licence, tax registration, etc..) business here; I'll say it's time consuming and leave it at that.

As far as construction loose-ends:
My metal roof (for the entryway overhang) was a week late for delivery. I got the call today that it has finally arrived, but it has arrived damaged -at least in part- so the damaged parts will be re-ordered and should be here by next Tuesday (the original order was 1 week late, so we'll see...).
The front door should be in by now, but it's not. Another week....?
The front end of the coffee/food prep area is laid out to my satisfaction (taking into consideration electrical, plumbing, efficiency, appliances, etc.), but I am still looking for a pastry display case to complete the layout.
The back end of the food prep/baking area is roughed-in, but not finalized.

There's more, too, but I'll get to some of those things in later posts.
For now, here are more tile pictures:

I am very pleased with the tile. Since my fingers and palms still have holes in them from the work (and my fingernails are just now beginning to recover), I'm not sure if I'm pleased because the job is over or because it looks good. Probably both, because it does look good.

Not grouted yet (but dusty):


If you've been following along, I mentioned finding a way to reduce my time when concreting in the cut-tile edge pieces. It's the Ziplock bag:

I filled it full of cement, cut the tip off one corner, and squirted the mud onto the floor where the edge piece was to be laid:

It was easier than trying to trowel the mud in with a screwdriver (or something of appropriate width).

This Ziplock trick is exactly the technique used to frost a cake (thanks, S, for teaching me something about that), except without a fancy patterned tip.

Oh, yeah, and icing doesn't have tiny rocks in it that prevent the bag's zipper from zipping tightly. That was so messy I didn't even take a picture of the exploded wet concrete bag.

Pouring Concrete (again)

I gave a slight mention to pouring more concrete, so although this is a couple of weeks behind us now, I'm still trying to catch up.

Here's the transit, used to determine how deep we had to dig to make an even grade from the floor on the inside to the area outside beneath the new overhang:


It was a Friday night, dark and late, but the concrete was ordered and ready for delivery Saturday morning at 7:30.

This picture was taken when it was even later and darker and PC is still digging:


Why hurry?
Because this is me:

And I was determined to get the tile in the front entryway done before leaving for Oregon.

I did - thanks in large part to PC and PR; I couldn't have done it without them.

Why Oregon? Well.... I am so far behind with blogging right now that you'll have to wait to hear about it, but I will say it was directly related to The 123 and it was well worth the trip (oh, and I can now honestly say that I can make the best coffee in the world!).