Lots of details to work out...

Now that our construction plans are dialed in and approved, we are able to solidify our construction budget. It is about 30% higher than expected, but we are still building a 2000 square foot facility from a completely gutted space for an incredible price. We owe most of our good fortune to Ryan Thompson, our friend and General Contractor. We could not do this without him!

I set up our Qwest account today. Since Comcast is unable to provide cable Internet service at our location, I am going with Qwest DSL. This is not my preference, but has become a necessity. We are getting two phone lines (main line and fax line) and 3Mbs DSL service for approx $120 per month. I had originally budgeted $150 for phones and $100 for cable Internet, so this is less than half of my original guestimate.

I am heading to the shop early tomorrow morning. We have the IT guys coming to run speaker wire (from our stereo location to four spots which will have Bose 301 speakers), our Ethernet cables from the office area to the POS area (point of sale), and to run our two phone lines and install phone jacks.

I am also meeting with our electrical contractor and Regional Building Dept Elec Inspector to discuss our new service plans. Rogers Elec plans to remove the conductors from existing 2" conduit, and running new 3/0 conductors in the same conduit to a new 200amp panel in our shop. The city approved it and is installing a new transformer for us. Our electrical engineer drew it up in the blueprints and Regional has reviewed it and approved it for construction. Now for some reason, the head Elec Inspector wants to take a look at it before we start, and has indicated that he will not allow us to do it. I can not believe how many snags we've hit dealing with the city. They have caused so many delays and added costs, not to mention lots of pain and emotional distress. After having all of our plans approved and getting our building permit in place was supposed to alleviate all of these problems. Now we are back to churn again... When does all of this craziness end??? Keep us in your prayers and hope for a reasonable solution to our electrical needs!

I ordered a bunch of smaller kitchen wares today from Bigtray.com. They have the best prices by far, and free shipping. We also set up our business account at Sam's Club today. The best part of having a business account there is that we can shop at 7"00am, instead of waiting until 10:00am. We learned the hard way one time by showing up at 8:00am or so, and they wouldn't let us in. Bummer...

I received a bill today from Waste Management for our construction dumpsters. Can you believe our dumpsters have cost us $750??? That's crazy! Oh well, what can you do, besides drive around town at 2:00am looking for someone else's dumpster. I wouldn't do that, but plenty of people have thrown stuff in our dumpsters at night. It is a daily curiosity now to go look in the dumpster in the morning and see what new things have shown up. So far, the largest things have been clothes dryers, 30" diameter HVAC duct work, sets of tires, mattress and box springs, etc... I feel like taking them out, but there is no place to put them. It doesn't pay to have a construction dumpster...

Our menu boards are complete and have been sent to the powder coaters. We ordered 500 neodymium magnets that we will attach to the back of our menu strips with epoxy. I made Tracy about 75 strips that are 1/8th inch thick, 2" tall, and 38" long. She ordered special paint markers for menu boards and is writing our menu items and pricing herself, using the Mandingo font. She wanted to try some highly stylized lettering, but it is too difficult to replicate over and over. A calligraphic style has to be 100% consistent or it all looks sloppy. I found some fun fonts that are easy to read, very fun styles, but do not rely so much on consistency. Do a Google search for Mandingo font and take a look at it.

I am getting excited about being open soon... We still have soooo much work to do, and so many details to work out. But, all is moving in the right direction, and we might even have enough capital budget left over to eat for a couple of months!
As usual, I haven't had much time for photography, but I'll try to post a good shot this week.
Take care and God Bless!
JD