Culinary Quest

The sheetrock is going up. The building inspector is scheduled to come this morning to look at the south kitchen wall. If approved, we can put up the face layer of sheetrock. We need two layers in order to have a 1 hour fire wall.



I was hoping to have the dining room ceiling ready for inspection, but we didn't make it.

Equipment is starting to arrive. My 3 compartment dish sink just arrived yesterday. I'm waiting for a 38 case bottle cooler, 3 bay steam table, 75" work top refrigerator to arrive.

3 compartment sink.

The building inspector came yesterday to perform an insulation inspection. He gave us the go ahead to proceed with the sheetrock installation. While he was there I asked him to give the place a quick once over to see if the other work that we've done was acceptable. He took a look at our ceiling/roof structure improvements in the back and was very impressed. In fact he was so impressed that he called his boss to take a look. They both liked what they saw. They also liked the way that we reinforced the existing exterior walls. Not too bad for an accountant turned cook.

View of the reinforced ceiling.



Taken a few weeks ago when we started reinforcing the roof structure.

Called the building inspector for an "insulation inspection". He'll come out tomorrow to make sure that we've property applied the insulation in the ceiling of the dining room. I'm not sure why the code says that it has to be inspected.

I've selected the electrician for the project and he is going to start working on the permit, which should take about 1 1/2 weeks. Just in time for my return from Ireland.

I've told one of the HVAC bidders that his proposal was too high. Let's see what he comes back with.

The plumber came out today to see what is under the existing floors (yes, we had to remove about 60 feet of plywood flooring and dig up a cement floor in an existing bathroom.)

Our ADA compliant ramp is in place. We've started putting up a few of the frames for the interior walls.

Picture of the ADA compliant ramp.



View of the dining room from the bar section.


We finished removing an eight inch thick concrete ceiling in the old mechanical room. It took almost a week to remove the ceiling (about 10 x 7 feet). It took a long time because we had to remove it in small pieces for the safety of the people removing it.

We started scraping the old paint from the balcony today. Tomorrow we'll start the construction of the new railings.

I ordered 40 chairs for the restaurant. Mahogany colored beechnut chairs with a green vinyl cushion. I also purchased a used ice/blender station for the bar. I'll pick it up on Monday or Tuesday after they clean it up a bit.

Well, the wife and I have decided to continue with the restaurant in spite of going over budget. This will take a bit of skills from our finance backgrounds but we've decided that we can proceed.
Yesterday I attended the Manager's Alcohol Responsibility Training class given by the Virginia ABC. The class was very informative. One interesting law that I didn't know existed is that Virginia restaurants cannot give complimentary alcholic beverages. That means when we have our friends and family pre-opening event, I'll have to charge for drinks.
Construction news... I'm going to contact the building inspectors' office tomorrow to see if they can perform an "insulation" inspection on Friday or Monday. I want to start installing the ceilings in the restaurant area.
Pictures to come tomorrow.

I've taken the weekend off to do some rebudgeting to see if I can continue with the restaurant plan. If I do continue cash will be very very tight. If I don't continue, it may be one or two years before I give it another shot.

Shall I go on with the restaurant or pull the plug? My electrician finally provided a quote for his electrical work and for the HVAC systems. Total cost... $96,500. Budget was $70,000. With this and the other cost overruns (water connection fee of $13,000 for a restaurant, etc) I'm trying to decide whether to pull the plug or not. I've requested quotes from other electricians but I've been told that the job is too big or they are too busy to do the work. I need a few days to think this through. In the mean time, renovation work continues.

The hottest day of the year. Thursday, August 3, 2006. At 8 a.m. the plumber arrived. At 8:15 am the guy with the ditchwitch arrived. At 8:45 Miss Utility arrived. At 9:00 Miss Utility informed us that we are sharing the water line with the building next door. At 9:30 the town's public works crew arrived to assess the situation. At 9:45 the digging continued. The ditchwitch was scraping the top of an old (but possibly used) sewer line. At 10:15 a couple of holes were made in the sewer line. At 11:00 the public works people decided to run a new water line to the building next door (in the trench that we were digging). At 12:00 we were trying dig/drill/punch a hole from the ditchwitch trench to the hole that we had prepared in the building. At 1:00 the inspector came and approved the trench for the connection. At 1:00 we were still trying to dig/drill/punch the hole. The 80 year old concrete footer of the building was proving to be a difficult beast to conquer. At 3:00 we managed to get a 1" hole into the building. At 3:15 we managed to get a masonry drill bit stuck in the concrete. At 3:30 we finally go the bit free. At 4:00 we finally got a 3" hole drilled through. At 4:00 I had to leave so I could pick up my wife at the airport (an hour and a half away). No water for a shower. I washed up with ice cold bottled water. At 6:00 I arrived at the airport. Her plane arrive late so I arrived about 15 minutes before she did. At 6:45 my helper called me to say that the plumber finally finished the job at 6:30 and everything was OK. At 9:00 we got home from the airport. I was ready for my shower. I turned on the hot water faucet. Perfect. I turned on the cold water. Nothing. I tried another cold water faucet. Still nothing. I filled a large pot with hot water so we could flush the toilet. I washed very briefly with hot water.

Friday morning. I finally traced the water issue. The plumber capped the old connection one joint too soon. OK. I started to fix the plumbing issue myself. My small pipe cutter was so badly rusted that I couldn't use it. Quick trip to Ace Hardware. Yes. They had one left in stock. Back home. The old pipes weren't taking the solder very well. Reclean... re-flux... resolder... no luck. Replace a bit of the old pipe with new. Perfect. Now I've got hot and cold water.

I'm getting a little pissed at one of my crew. He is almost out the door. He is a young guy (19) and has no sense of responsibility. If we don't tell him exactly what to do he just stands around and watches the other. I have a 54 year old worker. When he finishes his job he starts cleaning the place up. He keeps busy. He earns his pay. The young guy just stands. I told the guys today that I don't need to pay people just to stand around. If I want to see people standing I can look out of my windows. I don't have to pay them for the pleasure.

Extremely hot! Especially working under a tin roof with no air conditioning. Fortunately, my crew is doing most of the hard work. I'm primarily supervising and running out to get supplies.
We're still working on removing the 8" thick concrete ceiling over the old mechanical room. We're only about 1/3 of the way done with this task. After lunch today, I came up with a new way of dealing with it and we should have it removed by Friday.

We've also put down the first portion of the entrance ramp. We hope to have it completed by Friday as well.

The plumber has finally managed to get the trenching guy lined up and we should be in business tomorrow morning. Hopefully, we'll have the new water line hooked up by 1:00 tomorrow.

One of the local beer distributers stopped by today and gave me a case of sample products to evaluate (beers, flavored waters, Red Bull, etc.). I also got a golf shirt and a stupid looking Guinness hat.

I've placed my order for a hood/fire supression system today. It should be here the week after I get back from Ireland. While I was at the restaurant supply store I also picked up a 3 compartment sink for the bar.

Overall, I think that it was a fairly productive day.

I forgot to mention that my friends, the Halls, came out this past weekend. We toured a few of the local wineries. They also got a good look at the future restaurant. Nancy is going to help with the interior decorating. Now she has a better idea of what to look for when we head to Ireland at the end of the month. Stan was our wine expert and driver for the wine tour.