Moving in the right direction

I just came home from a meeting with Victor Chapman, our architect. We have had several consultations with him, and he has been a wonderful resource. We paid him a retainer fee and he will be at the shop tomorrow to take detailed measurements. We should have the first draft of CAD drawings in about a week. We have actually made it fairly easy for him by doing our own layout that meets all building code requirements (based upon Vic's input that he has provided over the last couple of weeks).

This whole process can be kind of crazy, but I feel like we have a very solid team put together and everything is moving in the right direction. Ryan Thompson moved his construction equipment/tools into the shop today. I am meeting him and his crew there tomorrow morning to put a huge dent in our demo work. I've already filled over half of a 30 cubic yard dumpster with demo over the last month or so. I've been moving at a snail's pace, as compared to having an actual GC and crew on site. I'm looking forward to tomorrow!

Ryan had a great idea today. We started cutting the front divider wall down to a half wall. Ryan suggested building that half wall out to 16" thick or so, and to build bookshelves on top, up to the ceiling. It would be capped with crown molding and will look very nice. We wanted to take it down to a half wall to allow natural light into the seating area to the front right of our layout. He said we can put bookshelves to the right and left of the half wall, and to fill the middle space with a huge pane of rippled glass. The natural light will still shine through it during the day, and it will be lit from below to give a glowing light emanating from the rippled glass at night. If you took a look at his work in photos posted several days ago, you can see that he is very creative and the quality of his work is top notch. I'm very happy to have him involved in this project!

Gotta run... Everybody have a good night.
JD