Downtown Streetscaping - Tuesday June 29, 2010

Grafton's Main Street 'Streetscape Phase II' started last Monday. It's been a bit dusty and noisy and congested down here with all the work. Even with the slight inconvenience, it's wonderful to see progress in downtown.

(This project has, so far, produced at least a couple of good stories - and you know how I like a good story.... This is the first of at least 3 updates related to the construction goings-ons...)

These first pictures I'm posting are after the old sidewalks had been jack-hammered and ripped up. These almost-complete views are a reminder that this whole mess will be well worth the effort in a very short time.

This picture is from Tuesday (yesterday), very early in the morning (you can see the mist in the hills in the far background) and half of the section they were pouring is already poured and ready for finishing:

Grafton's Builder's Service & Supply had one of their concrete trucks here at 6am and the guys of R&R Construction, who are doing this phase of the sidewalk replacement, were here even earlier.

This next shot is from later in the day; the concrete is still green (raw), but not goopy:

New sidewalks!

Check out this post over at the Taylor County Blog Project for an old post about the first phase of sidewalk replacement.

This second phase means that we will soon have classy streetlights on this end of town, too.

Progress is good. Messy (even goopy), sometimes, but good.

Construction Pictures, etc.

These pictures are about 2 weeks old (I told you in the last post that I was running behind. Again.); you can tell because the ground is not covered in snow and ice and the sun is shining.

Until today, there has been nothing but snow, more snow, ice, gloom, and more snow.
Today, while not sunny, the temperature is above freezing for the first time in at least a couple of weeks.

During this prior brief, sunny, but barely above freezing period, a few rows of block were laid.

Here's the site during preparation, before mixing mud:

Fortunately, this mess in the parking lot (Yes, PC, it is a mess. An understandable mess, and a temporary mess, but it is a mess.) doesn't effect the path to the front door:

Block laying:

This is what it looks like now, even two weeks later. There has been some other digging going on for plumbing, but that's been hard fought: the ground is frozen.

If this current run of above freezing weather holds for a few days, the ground can thaw enough to pour the concrete floor. After that, there will be more block and then the wood framing. At that point it will begin to look like something pretty quickly.

Let's hope the weather holds.

Making a Mess (Again)

After the asphalt came up, the diggers came in:

And then then comes the concrete:

Final grade on the footing:

Thanks to CJ Landscaping for their site preparation for the concrete pour.

I'll be posting about CJ Landscaping over at the Taylor County Blog Project in the next few days;

I'll come back and update links to their information, too.

*update:

Here's the link to the Taylor County Blog Project's Small Business Highlight of CJ Landscaping.

Pulling Up Asphalt

PC & PR pulled up the asphalt where the first floor of the new addition will sit:

As usual, I'm behind on blogging. The footings have already been dug and poured and the parking lot is a huge mess. A huge construction mess.

Whipping Cream Mess

We got a new cream whipper. It's a fancy stainless steel contraption. I've never used one before, so of course I had to make a big mess. I read the directions, but I still made a mess.
I started to clean up, but stopped and grabbed the camera first:


We've got it figured out now.
Mostly.

Progress in Pictures

"Random Pictures" would be an appropriate title, too, but "Progress..." sounds much better, huh?

Up until last weekend, the toilet sat in the middle of the bathroom floor:


And then I snapped this glamorous shot of PC setting the toilet (yes, I said setting and not sitting; he's sitting on a bucket):

If you look closely, you'll see that he's eating an ice cream bar. Eating ice cream over a brand new toilet is just one of the many fun things we've been able to do in preparation for opening.
It's a very nice toilet, too; it's one of those 'whooshy' fast-flushers (that's the scientific term).

Here's the view from down the street:

The ubiquitous mess in the parking lot is fast approaching its final days; parking lot clean-up is scheduled at the end of the 'To-do to Open' List.

The sawhorses in the entryway are nearing an end, too. There's some final trim work to do that requires sawing and that's about it (finally).


However, we still have the occasional pile of miscellaneous tools/parts. Fortunately, these jumbles are mostly growing in the closets:


That's it for now.
More soon.

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.

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.

Floor Tile

We've got quite the impressive mess in the parking lot.
Again.

In the last post I showed you the clean floor - and it's so clean because everything went outside to the parking lot (okay, some went upstairs, but not much).
I'm glad we were able to have a clean parking lot for Mother's Day and Memorial Day, but after that the outside mess multiplied.
It's temporary.

Here's inside looking out through the new door:



To where I was mixing mud:


My trusty drill and mixer blade. The same set-up I used to mix the buckets of drywall mud.




Here's a pretty good start:


I wear knee pads (I haven't thought to take a picture of those, yet), which decreases wear and tear on the knees, but I haven't found anything to help out with the back.
Or the fingers: The concrete dries up my skin and by the time the floor is ready to grout, all the water prunes up my damaged, cracked fingers and produces some pretty odd looking holes.
And the fingernails... let's just say they're looking kinda' rough.


I have more tiling pictures AND I had a brainstorm that really helped me out the other day for piecing in the edges. I'll tell you about that soon.

Entryway Construction - Part 3

PC, PR, & Curtis opened up the doorway last weekend.
Here's PR:






This has been the plan all along, but it's one thing to visualize an idea and something else to actually see it become reality. I was excited when I went down Saturday morning and walked through the wall for the first time.
Look at that! A doorway!


I'm still fascinated with the brick work from more than a century ago.
Here's the cross section of the cut in the wall:

If you look closely, you can see wooden wedges in some of these brick courses (more on this later...).

And inside looking out:

The line of sight looking down Main Street is amazing! This is exactly what we wanted to see even before the very first inspection hole PC cut in the brick.
[See the red caboose?]

Exciting!

Outside - Pouring Concrete Part 1

We poured in the early evening. It was the best time according to our schedules, but probably not the best time according to the sun. In the afternoon the sun hits full onto this side of the building and, between the bricks and the asphalt, it can get pretty hot. Add a layer of sunblock and it feels great, but the concrete sets up faster that way. It gets thick and goopy coming down the chute; the driver kept hosing it down to keep it moving easily.


This picture shows the wooden forms PC built against the building:






Remember those asphalt squares that were removed from the parking lot? PC was able to dig them out about 18 inches. The soil beneath the parking lot was packed very tightly and made for some hard digging. He found a few glass shards and some old bones. (Bones!? Yep. There's a story there, don't you think?)
Next, he built wooden forms around the boxes to bring them all up to the same elevation because the parking lot slopes slightly toward the street (I didn't get pictures of the tool he uses to do that - I was busy holding the measuring stick).






This isn't the greatest picture, but it'll give you an idea of what he did. The wood around the outside, obviously, is to form the concrete into shape and to bring it to the proper elevation. The 2x4 across the top is there to hold the 'J' bolts in place. (They're really shaped like the letter 'L' with a long vertical leg, but they're called 'J' bolts. I don't know why, I'm just telling it.) On top you can see those two little knobs - those are the threaded ends with washers and bolts and covered in duct tape to protect them from the concrete (it gets messy). The long ends are floating down in the hole so they're anchored good and tight once everything sets up. You can see the pencil marks on that 2x4, too. He's got it set up perfectly to bolt down the columns that will support the entryway overhang. (Right now the columns are sitting in the garage here at home waiting for me to wire-brush them, sand them and paint them. Instead, I'm sitting here drinking coffee and writing blog entries.)






Here's PC doing some last minute reinforcing. I'm sure that there's some formula for figuring out the amount of pressure that gets exerted against concrete forms, but I don't know what it is. It's enough for me to know that it's a LOT. TONS. Or more.
I've never seen forms blow out, probably because I've always helped pour into forms that PC builds and anything that PC builds will not be going anywhere anytime soon. Anytime soon meaning in the next hundred years or more (way more). (I'll have to show you pictures of the log cabin that he built -but that's way off topic....)
Apparently, though, blowing forms is not all that uncommon. PC has says when it happens they explode. Yikes.






Here it comes, pouring the boxes first, PC ready with the shovel:




A quick thank you to Curtis for helping out with this pour and also to Jim Mayle, the driver from Builder's Service & Supply. This isn't the first time that Jim has brought us concrete. He's delivered to our house at least a couple of times - once core filling the block walls for the garage and once for half of the floor in the garage (one of these days we'll do the other half). Jim is soft-spoken and patient and he knows what he's doing. Thank you, Jim.

Blogger wouldn't let me upload more than these 5 pictures so, instead of fighting to move them around I'll just start another post. I have time, I think; the kids were worn out last night....