Set in Stone
A very exciting thing happened on Friday: we got a floor! Jill and I dropped by to see the concrete guys in action, skating around on the wet concrete to smooth it out. One of the most dramatic things about the way the building looked was that all the shoring, ladders, and other construction clutter had been removed, so we have one giant room (plus our tenant's space).
Seeing the new concrete made us have an attack of nerves: it's so permanent. The pipes that you can see sticking up in the picture above are the drains for our sinks, so the decisions we made about where to put those are now set in stone. No more drawing arrows on the blueprints to show how we want things moved around. I hope we didn't mess up.
Jill and I have spent lots of time thinking about how to finish the concrete. Everywhere we've been for the past three weeks, we've noticed the floors. I have to admit, concrete floors are not my dream, so I've had a hard time coming to terms with how the finished product is going to look. We've decided to stain the concrete, but we haven't picked the color yet. As we were standing around looking at the new concrete on Friday, we made the snap decision to etch lines in the coffee shop area to make "tiles". I went back on Saturday night to see how they came out. Here's a picture of the partially-cured concrete:
By Monday the floor will be cured enough for the guys to get back to work. They will put in the new wall that divides the cafe from the kitchen, and suddenly the space will start to look like we've been imagining it for months.
We're thinking about our grand opening (now vaguely scheduled for the third week in November). The date that the construction is going to be done is unfortunately close to Thanksgiving, which has thrown our plans off. I know that in a year it's not going to matter whether we opened on the day before Thanksgiving or the week after it, but it seems like a big deal right now. Then again, everything seems like a big deal right now: what style aprons to buy, how big to make the font on our menu board, whether to sell bags of coffee beans, what wattage lights to install, where to buy our furniture, how many inches we need to leave between the stools at our bar, whether there are enough people who buy coffee between 6:00 am and 7:00 am to justify opening that early, what speed internet connection we need, whether solar-powered holiday lights really work, how to enter gift certificate sales into our accounting program, what to do about the fact that our walk-in cooler is being delivered two weeks before we have the concrete pad poured to place it on. Starting a business is insane--the breadth of decisions that have to be made is impossible to get your brain around. How can anyone know about all these things? I can't wait for the day when I only have to make choices about maintaining the business.
Seeing the new concrete made us have an attack of nerves: it's so permanent. The pipes that you can see sticking up in the picture above are the drains for our sinks, so the decisions we made about where to put those are now set in stone. No more drawing arrows on the blueprints to show how we want things moved around. I hope we didn't mess up.
Jill and I have spent lots of time thinking about how to finish the concrete. Everywhere we've been for the past three weeks, we've noticed the floors. I have to admit, concrete floors are not my dream, so I've had a hard time coming to terms with how the finished product is going to look. We've decided to stain the concrete, but we haven't picked the color yet. As we were standing around looking at the new concrete on Friday, we made the snap decision to etch lines in the coffee shop area to make "tiles". I went back on Saturday night to see how they came out. Here's a picture of the partially-cured concrete:
By Monday the floor will be cured enough for the guys to get back to work. They will put in the new wall that divides the cafe from the kitchen, and suddenly the space will start to look like we've been imagining it for months.
We're thinking about our grand opening (now vaguely scheduled for the third week in November). The date that the construction is going to be done is unfortunately close to Thanksgiving, which has thrown our plans off. I know that in a year it's not going to matter whether we opened on the day before Thanksgiving or the week after it, but it seems like a big deal right now. Then again, everything seems like a big deal right now: what style aprons to buy, how big to make the font on our menu board, whether to sell bags of coffee beans, what wattage lights to install, where to buy our furniture, how many inches we need to leave between the stools at our bar, whether there are enough people who buy coffee between 6:00 am and 7:00 am to justify opening that early, what speed internet connection we need, whether solar-powered holiday lights really work, how to enter gift certificate sales into our accounting program, what to do about the fact that our walk-in cooler is being delivered two weeks before we have the concrete pad poured to place it on. Starting a business is insane--the breadth of decisions that have to be made is impossible to get your brain around. How can anyone know about all these things? I can't wait for the day when I only have to make choices about maintaining the business.
posted by The Cooking Doctor at
5:25 AM
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