How About that Ceiling?

The construction is done! I say that in the same spirit that George Bush announced an end to major combat operations in Iraq. Let me qualify: we now have walls, floors, and a ceiling, and all the stuff that goes under/behind/above them. The next two weeks will be the "finishing" stages: staining and sealing the floors, painting, adding the trim and fixtures, moving in the equipment, and getting inspected by every city authority known to man. Hopefully that will prove easier than stabilizing Iraq.

Here's what the cafe looks like now:

We think it's funny that Chris and Aaron used part of their custom-painted "Alley Closed" plywood sheet for the back wall of the coffee counter. Of course this will get covered up when the rest of the counter is built, but we'll always know that we have a part of that iconic sign built into our counter.

We're really happy with how high the ceilings ended up being. We never really knew for sure, because it depended on how much space the insulation took, but now that the ceilings are closed, the rooms still feel very spacious.

Here's the teaching kitchen:

You can see the huge hood over where the stove will go. There was a mini crisis about that, because the first time Jill and I walked in and saw the hood after it had been hung up, we realized that the location wasn’t where we had been imagining it. Some other things about the layout of the room had changed since we drew up the plans, and the hood ended up being way too close to the back and side walls. I almost had a heart attack. I was trying to calm myself by thinking that in ten or fifteen years I’d probably get over being upset that my stove was in the wrong place. However, Aaron worked some miracle that I do not want to examine too closely, and the mechanical guys agreed to move the hood for us (a big job, given that there’s a lot of ducting that has to be welded in place, so all of that had to be cut and redone). We like the mechanical guys. There are two main guys on our job, Jamey (who has two lip rings) and Helper (whose name we keep forgetting, and who has a blue mohawk), and we buy them lunch at Chipotle every time we stop by the building because we keep asking them to help us unload heavy stuff from various trucks. Since they moved my hood for me, we've bumped them up to free coffee for life.

The middle part of the kitchen will be occupied by prep tables, and then along the storefront side (where I was standing to take the above picture) will be a beautiful big dining table where we'll enjoy the fruits of our labors in the cooking classes and private events. It's going to be another week before we can move everything out of my garage and into the building, because we have to let the floors dry after they are stained, but very soon I'll be able to engage--heck, practically wallow--in one of my most favorite activities in the world: kitchen organization.