Our plumbers came on site Friday afternoon February 23. They worked Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. The were completely finished with a significant amount of work and called for our rough-in inspection Tuesday morning. They passed the inspection on their first try! I spent Friday cutting and jack-hammering concrete to allow them to do their under slab work.
If you ever had a random thought thinking it would be cool to run a jack hammer for a day, I can finish that thought for you. It seems pretty cool for about two minutes, then you quickly realize how happy you are that you don't do this kind of work day in and day out. After running the jack hammer, you then have to pick up all of the busted concrete, throw it in a wheel barrow, and haul it off. This is not a great way to spend a day.
Then, after all of that work, I had to buy 66 bags of cement, which involved picking them up and stacking them on the flatbed cart at Home Depot, paying for them, moving them from the flatbed to my truck, driving to the shop, carrying them in from the truck to the shop and stacking them, then picking them up and placing them in the mixer, then pouring them in the hole, and shoveling the wet concrete around. Some areas were difficult to get to, so we had to pour the mixed concrete into a five gallon bucket, then carry it to its final resting place. In all, the concrete was moved four to six times. I got a pretty good workout this week...
We had another struggle with the Regional Building Department. They failed us on our framing inspection because they wanted the studio walls to be framed up to the 14 foot deck, with all penetrations fire caulked. This would have been a nightmare, so we opted for a fire rated ceiling, fire rated doors, and fusible link fire dampers in the HVAC system. The framing inspector was not looking for that solution and failed us. It took five days to get the information we needed for the fire rated ceiling and to fight with Regional about our proposed solution. Ryan finally came to terms with Regional, and we had Vic (the architect) modify the drawings and place his stamp on the drawings. I got the approved modifications from Vic at 4:30pm on Friday. Woo hoo... nothing stopping us now from getting our framing inspection completed.
For next week, we have the electricians coming to finish their rough in, and to work on the new service installation. I got some free #2 stranded copper THHN wire from my friend Kevin, and I ordered a 500 foot roll of 3/O wire from Home Depot for $1600. I'm hoping to get $150 or so for the existing wire we will remove at the recycle center, to offset the high cost of the new wire by a little...
The IT guys are coming on Tuesday... We had planned to run everything off of cable broadband service, but Comcast told me yesterday that they do not have service in our building. They are willing to install it for a modest price of $5600. We are about 500 yards from Comcast's headquarters in Colorado Springs. I can not even believe we can't get cable TV or broadband service. It makes me want to walk across the parking lot and throw a brick through their storefront window... I'm obviously not going to do that, but I can't believe how frustrating it is. We intend to have free WIFI for the shop, as well as run our credit card processing via broadband.
Instead, I have to call Qwest and talk to them about DSL. We are having two phone lines installed. I'm wondering if I can get two different DSL lines, one for the WIFI, and one for our business computers and credit card machine. I'm not sure what I'll do if Qwest says they can't provide service to our building. If you hear a scream around the world sometime Monday morning, that will be why...
Our drywall subcontractor is coming on Monday March 12th. They should be able to hang all the drywall in a day, and have it taped, mudded, and textured by the end of the week. This amount of work would take me two months to do by myself (I do high quality drywall work, but at the cost of being very, very slow).
Ryan and Rob are cutting all of the cabinet parts Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday next week. They are then going to deliver the parts to my shop here in town and we will assemble the cabinets there. Ryan has high-end blades on his equipment, as well as large in-feed and out-feed tables for his table saw. We could have made all the parts in my shop, but it would have taken some time to build in-feed/out-feed tables, brought Ryan's blades and installed them on my equipment, etc.
I will be spending some time in my wood shop next week building some tables for the shop. We originally planned to have built in bench seating along the half wall in the center of the cafe area. Due to the time involved in building the bench seating, we have decided to hold off on that. I'm going to build a couple of tables instead. I'm actually looking forward to it! I made some tables for Paul and Heather at the Raven's Nest Coffee Shop, and would love to have tables in our shop that I made myself! I have always wanted to make a chess table out of African Padauk (a pretty reddish-brown wood) and Maple. This is my chance...
Here are some photos of Padauk projects:
Click the image to see a larger version.
Sean Rafferty is still working with our logo. We sent him the version Tracy designed and he liked it very much. He is creating a vector based version, as well as a BW graphic for copy work. He will be coming to the shop this week to help us work out the paint scheme. Tracy has put together a color palette, but we are seeking input on how to use the color and where...
Tracy and I took a Quick Books Pro class last week at UCCS (University of Colorado - Colorado Springs). I'm used to just playing with software until I learn what it can do. The class we took didn't teach us anything I couldn't have figured out on my own, but we get two free hours of CPA time with our paid tuition (the tuition cost less than the two hours would cost, so it is a good deal). We want professional help to set up our books in the beginning. We can learn the daily tasks of keeping the books up to date, but want to insure it is all built on a 'strong foundation'.
I guess that is about it for now...
I'll post more soon.
JD
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