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.

Menu Board - Opening Special

I have a ton of random pictures, but I figured you were probably sick of them by now.
Instead of randomness, here's something that speaks for itself:


Progress!
I have a ton of pictures of cabinet building, equipment, menu board installation, random jumbled messes, pizza crust, and the bathroom, but the "Opening Special" is the closest I have to proof of "very close to opening."

The countertops will be installed today! I'll take a ton of pictures (and try to post them before they get old).

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!

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.

Tile

I am finished laying tile! All the edge pieces got mudded in today!
I am relieved.


Now I have to grout.

Pictures 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!

Interior Update - Half of Almost Nothing

I promised you an interior update this week and all of a sudden it's Friday. So, here goes:

This first picture looks like nothing, which, let me tell you, is better than looking like brick or 2x4s or insulation or bare drywall.
Why?
Because this nothing is actually progress:





This view is a little wider - it actually looks like a little more than nothing:




What is all this nothing?
Primer. The pre-coat coat of paint. So, in a puzzling sort of way, even though I'm not really painting, I'm actually going through all the motions of painting; I'm priming.

It almost looks like something in this view:




See all these angles and corners? This is why it's taken me so long to mud and sand everything. Well, okay, that's one (good) reason.






I'm tempted to stop here. It actually looks as if I've accomplished something, doesn't it? I suppose I have, but it seems so slow (and messy).
If I back up and take a picture -looking up towards the ceiling- you can see that I'm not finished.
This picture is a little dizzying:




But this one is more clear:



Really, I'm about half way. Actually, I'm a lot further than that, because I'm almost ready to prime this other half, too. I just finished sanding it yesterday and later today I will patch a few rough spots. After it dries, I'll sand it again with a finer sandpaper and it's ready to prime.

Why did I do it in halves? Because I just couldn't wrap my head around the whole thing at once. Knowing I was done with half, and only had half more to go, was a strategy to preserve my sanity.
Did it work?
Hmmmm.....

Outside

Structurally speaking, The 123 building is in pretty darn good shape, even without considering it's advanced years. A part of that is due to it's size - it's rather small and definitely narrow, making timber sagging a non-issue. Another, probably larger, part is due to the attention and care that it's received over the years. There have apparently been periods of neglect, but the periods of maintenance have counterbalanced and even outweighed the intermittent disregard.

One area that PC has been concerned with is this stone portion of the wall (west -the broadside that faces the parking lot):



You can see in the above picture the steel rebar that PC is tying into a grid. This is the beginning stages of pouring a concrete wall that will tie into the old stone work.




Here's a closer look:






Up close, against the building, PC dug down beneath the asphalt to provide a foundation for the new wall. The rebar is also tied into the wall at the rear of the parking lot, which is in much better shape (though it will eventually need cleaned and tuck-pointed again).






PC tying steel:



Next will come the wooden forms to 'form' the wet concrete into a wall. (They're already there, I just haven't been able to keep up with the posting).
And remember those square holes in the asphalt of the parking lot? I'll show you more of those, too.

Over at my blog -MKStover.com- I got to talking about drywalling and rototilling.
Over at the Taylor County Blog, I complimented the sidewalks (and Holy Cow! those new sidewalks deserve compliments! It looks great!).
I'll be back here before the end of the week to catch up on PC's weekend work.

Getting Closer!

Look! It's a shiny new gas meter!

It's hooked up to The 123!

We have a few more hoops to jump through, but it looks as if we will finally have gas. Monday. Hopefully.

Other good news: the furnace works!

Gas Line...Ack!

I just started a post, and then I lost it. I have no idea where it went and I looked for it everywhere.
Anyway, I will try again....

When you walk into the Grafton 123 (when we open sometime next year), you can feel safe. Very, very safe. At least from any type of gas leak or gas explosion or any other type of gas-related accident. The safety standards required by the gas company are strict!
We passed the pressure test! Yay!
I did not get a picture of the highly-sensitive pressure monitoring seismology-looking equipment. Sorry, but I've been home all week with a feverish 7 year old. Poor kid has been anywhere from 99.0 to 103.8. Fortunately, with the help of a wide variety of Gatorade colors, he has been well hydrated. (Have you seen some of the new Gatorade stuff? They have Gatorade Rain and the Lime flavor is kind of a pale psychodelic green that puts me in mind of black cauldrons and eye-of-newt. When I see it outside of the Gatorade bottle in a clear glass, it makes me want to scream, "Don't drink that!")
Today I called the doctor, but with no openings and no other symptoms and the large intake of Gatorade, they told me to call them back if his fever spikes again. So far so good, though. It hasn't been back up since early this morning and he's eaten twice and switched from Gatorade to apple juice and a glass of milk.
He looks like he's finally kicked whatever nasty bug got him. Thankfully.
So, anyway, the gas line gauntlet is not over yet. They are going (maybe did already) to hook up the line to the curb box and install a meter. We have to get a licensed HVAC technician in there to inspect the furnace before they will turn on the gas. And if the furnace doesn't pass inspection or the pilot light won't stay lit when the gas gets turned on, then they'll turn it right back off.
Rigid. Safe.
Safe is good, but I have to keep reminding myself of the safe part.

Gas Line, cont.

So the pressure test to check the new line and new pipes entering the back of The 123 was Wednesday. Really, it's a 24 hour pressure test so it was Wednesday and Thursday. The test was complete with a fancy seismology-looking box with complicated circle graph paper and several arms with red pen tips on the ends.
Really.
However, I did not get a picture.
But, not to worry, because we failed the test.
So we get to do it again. Fix the leak, and then the gas company will come back and do it all again. Next week.
I will be sure to take pictures of the weird looking contraption.
Argh.

Gas Line

Here's the link to the original post about the need to replace the gas line.


This was a lot faster than digging the trench by hand:

A friend with a tractor and the small back-hoe attachment came over and dug the trench and backfilled it in about a half a day (Thanks, Junior!).




Here's the view from the street above:

Here's a picture of the required plastic gas line:

Remember the Curb Box that was such a problem to locate?
Look right below the yellow line painted on the stone:

Here's a close-up:

It's not really a box at all, but a plain-looking shut-off valve. The reason it was so hard to find is because it was so far below the surface. And this is after they raised it!

The painted yellow line was so we didn't lose it again.

There are a few more updates that need done before we can have it pressure tested. However, that should be done by the end of the week and then we'll be able to get a meter hooked up and start checking out the furnaces....

Gas Line Replacement

The gas line has to be replaced. From the back of the building where the meter would be -if there was a meter- all the way up to the street has to be ripped up and updated.

I thought we were doing pretty well by getting the gas meter put back in so we could test everything and get the heat going in plenty of time so there aren't any freezing water pipes, but it's not that simple. Unfortunately.

Once the gas has been turned off to a building for more than a year, the gas company comes and reclaims the meter. That explains why it's missing. And why the pipes froze.

Because the meter was reclaimed, the entire system has to be updated and certifiably inspected before they'll give us a meter. While this gas company protocol seems a bit extreme, I have to keep in mind that it is designed to prevent explosions. So that's probably a good thing.

The lines, right now, are steel. I always thought steel pipes were fine. Apparently I am very out of date and now plastic is required.

It looks as if we have some digging to do.