More Random Picture

Here's a quick post in the spirit of trying to keep up with the blog even if it means posting old pictures:



These next ones are a little bit newer; the saws are a good representation of what is happening inside (I will post new inside pictures soon):






Here's where the wood scraps go:





The countertop comes next week and the espresso machine will be here the week of the 8th!

I've had an incredible response to the tiny 'Now Taking Applications' ad in the Mountain Stateman (Thank you!).

I also have a new sign that will go up this weekend with others soon to follow....

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!).

Entryway - Wooden Wedges, Tough Bricks and Mortar

Check out this more-than-a-century-old wedge of wood:

We can't tell what kind of wood it is, but its very dry and, therefore, lightweight.



Here's where they came from:

Can you see that thin line of wood? These wedges were used to even out the courses of brick; they became a part of the wall.
There were none of these showing on the outside, only on the inside where the lathe-and-plaster interior finish would cover them up.



These wedges were here, in the last three courses of brick, the only barrier remaining in the new door opening:


It took four hours of hard work and heavy tools to chip these bottom rows out of here!



It's good to know the old building is so tough.

Step Elimination - More concrete

When The 123 was a dentist office, it had a double entrance in from the street: You pushed the commercial door and walked into a small foyer with two doors. One door leads upstairs (it's still there) and the other door (which is not there) led into the waiting room. The walls that created the small hallway -and the waiting room and the reception desk and the exam rooms- are no longer there; they haven't been for some time, but that series of small steps that made up the foyer were still there. Until last weekend.

In order to gain a small amount of floor space and to make fewer corners for tiling, PR and Curtis formed the little instep, mixed a couple of bags of concrete, and filled in the hole.

This is PR smoothing out the concrete:








PR (foreground) and Curtis (doorway) finishing up:


This creates a 3 foot wide entry with just one step up and no asides leading to the door at the bottom of the steps.
I've already tiled over it; I'll be getting those pics up soon, but I'm leaving now to go tile some more....

Front Door - Overhang Support Columns

Here's where I get to show you how those squares of concrete with anchor bolts are put to use.

PC stood these columns Saturday morning in the rain. He was happy to get them out of our garage and we are both excited about more visible progress (my interior progress is much slower, though not quite invisible - I'll tell you more about inside later this week).

Here's the first one standing:



He had the base plates of each column lined up perfectly on the trailer so that he could pull them over the edge and line them up exactly where they needed to be to get the anchor bolts in place before standing them.



Perfect fit!
PC did a great job planning everything out (I'm not surprised; he's very good at this type of thing).








Yep, they all four went up, but these are all the pictures for today. May is a very busy month and I have a million other things I have to get done today - including a couple of hours of sanding at The 123.

Check out the TaylorCountyWestVirginia.blogspot.com to see a sampling of the international attention Grafton has been getting and why May is so busy - and there's lots more to come!

A New Door and Amazing Bricklaying Historical Engineering

Right now, the Grafton 123 Coffee House is just a concept. We are in the process of gutting the first floor. Because the first floor was most recently a dentist's office, the floor plan does not fit our needs. Neither does the entry. The street face of the building is narrow and because we have the wide-open parking lot side exposure, we've decided to put our main entryway on the west side. Plus, the improved access will make renovation easier:

You can barely see the door outline in the picture above, but you can see where it'll be located in the wall.

This one shows a closer view. You can see the steel header that they have cut and bolted into the brick wall and the vertical outline cuts:

The small hole in the center of the door was a test cut. The brick wall is actually three bricks thick. Because it was built 117 years ago, the brick was laid in the old style, as its own support rather than a facade. Most of the rows of brick are laid horizontally with the long side out, but every 7 rows are laid with the short side out so that they can cross two rows below them. By staggering the turned-brick row from both sides of the wall, everything gets tied in pretty tight. Pretty amazing really. Look at this picture:

While you can see the turned rows, you can also see that the mortar joints on the outside of the wall are messy. This is because it was originally built up against an existing building (I'm not sure how long it's been gone) and the mason couldn't 'strike' them.

According to John, our friend the mason who helped with the door layout, it's called 'striking:' where the excess mortar is scraped down to a thin, clean line. In cold weather, apparently, it can keep it from freezing before the concrete sets, but mainly, I think, it just looks nice. And professional.

This is view from the inside:

You can see the mess and the existing reception desk still leftover from the dentist office. Opening up this new door will make it easier to haul stuff outside. You can see the brick down low on the wall under the hole, but up higher it's an old wallboard that was under the dentist office paneling.


Here's a view out the peek-hole. My husband, PC, is on the left and John, the Mason, is on the right (even though you can barely see them because of the bright sunlight outside):

I'll try to remember to take more pictures of the destruction mess...