wacky1980

thanks this is a small town. like, really small. i don't know of any actual, self-described artists in this town beyond the retired lady across the alley who makes pottery. and her husband is the cocksucker who gave us hell over the fence and parking, so she's right out. but i'm not opposed to the idea of letting someone else ... um ... well, typing this out is a little harder than i expected it to be. ok ... with a little coaxing, i would probably be willing to let someone take a swing at painting my property ... ugh, i dunno. i'm apparently a little protective of my new baby.

after i get the necessities finished up, i'm going to probably paint the upstage walls something neutral, or panel them and paint the paneling. wife picked out a good color somewhere in between brown and tan. i have an idea that i'd like to paint hop bines on several walls, because that's kinda the theme we'll have rolling out there with all the live hop plants. it would have to be nice art though. no cheesy kindergarten-quality vine drawings. don't know if i'll commission that stuff or try to do it myself. do you have suggestions?

it's cancer. it's probably cancer.

also, a picture for @scoobdog. not mine; one of the band girlfriends took this. shitty filter aside, i kinda like it. i'll be using this angle a bunch in the future.

first weekend is in the book. the heat kicked our asses, but we had a good turnout on friday for the band. it's gonna take a couple weeks for word to get out, because we've only done a minimal amount of marketing due to not knowing for sure when we'd be open and not having any images to use for promo. but we got some good stuff over the weekend that we'll use this week to start pumping out the promo. this weekend is gonna be on the quiet side, and then next weekend is county fair weekend so we'll probably lay kinda low then as well so as to not directly compete with their timeline. but we're setting ourselves up to fill the rest of the season with music and events and whatnot, starting on like the 2nd or 3rd week of august. heading back in tonight to work on hard surfaces. gotta paint and poly bartops, and tear down the frozen machine for maintenance. easy stuff in comparison to the last few weeks of evening workloads.

so you paid $5 for the cocktail and an additional $5 for the atmosphere/location, would be my guess.

well...was it any good?

yesterday was a rough one. i took the day off from the bank and we started work at 6am. finished all the wiring, hung the garage door, set up the last 4 draft lines, finished out the restrooms, got some plumbing stuff buttoned up, organized the bar and cooler, and got the doors open by 4pm. then we had a band last night and closed it down at midnight. this morning i'm working at the bank, then back outside to open the garden at noon in another hot-assed 95F day. a methamphetamine bump would be pretty nice right now. anyways, we're open.

THAT'S WHAT I SAID

passed our final health inspection -- tentatively. i still have a few things to get right, but they're going to let us open anyway. they're coming back in a month for a follow-up. THANK THE GODS. deliveries are all in. i still have to go after the garage door tonight, and then get up early tomorrow to install it before the heat gets too crazy again. beer cooler arrived this afternoon. they lost it on a dock at the warehouse two hours away from here. it took them a week to find it, but they did yesterday and got it here today. got some more painting and decorating to get done, and a little electrical work on the stage. gotta seal some surfaces in the bar, but that will have to wait until next week. and finally, i still have 3 tables to put together, but i might mess with them tonight after i get back from picking up the garage door. we're running with five tables tonight. oh, yeah. we're officially opening tonight (!). at this point, we're about as ready as we can hope to be. holy fucking cow, we made it...

down to the last few bits now. i still have 4 taps to install (the other 6 have performed spectacularly since i got them installed saturday), plus the tv and internet. also a little painting here and there, building the last couple tables, and adding some paper dispensers in restrooms, and we're just about all the way there. final health inspection is tomorrow afternoon. barring any complications from that, we should be up and running at capacity this weekend. very first pour off one of my favorites from the new draft system. this pint of TG pseudo sue tasted better than any beer has ever tasted.

i'm so close. kinda losing my mind at this point. been keeping loose track of the hours i've spent working in there, and i'm at about 75 hours in the last 7 days. and that's after working around the day job, 8-4 M-F. i'm taking today off while the plumber and carpenter finish up their lists. we "opened" for a few hours last night with a very limited capability. only one bathroom was functional, and none of my bar sinks. the draft system is still in boxes. frozen cocktails are up. soda gun/mixed cocktails is up. under-bar beer cooler still hasn't arrived, so i was retrieving beers one-at-a-time from the walk-in for customers, ugh. tv/internet isn't installed yet either, but i got a sound system wired up so we at least had music. and with no internet, the point-of-sale is functioning in cash-only status. i got three tables built for seating...five more to go. and i pulled a couple barstools from the other place until that order arrives. even with all the unfinished work, about 20 people wandered through and had a fucking blast until i kicked them out at 1am. it's still way too early to make any assumptions, but i feel like we've built something pretty awesome here. gonna hit things hard tomorrow and sunday, and hopefully i'm at about 90% capability after that. then i get a few evenings next week to finish up some storage and electrical stuff that's not necessary to function, but will make life a lot easier. and we open hard next thursday.

is it, like, a job requirement for plumbers to be reeeeally bad at sticking a timeline? even one they offer up? or is it just this one plumber.

No shit, right? Tonight was a shorter evening of work. It's only 12:30 and I'm already home. We finished the cooler and got it running (down to 39*F when I last checked) and turned on some lights. I also got the bar top put together, and I'm pretty pleased with the result so far. We'll be routing... routering... uhm... finishing the edges and installing it tomorrow, and painting the bar room as well. Carpenter plans to finish out the bathrooms, build the foot rail, and hang the last couple doors tomorrow. Plumber keeps letting us down, but he promised he'd be in tomorrow to install fixtures...

went until 3am last night, getting the cooler *almost* finished up and wiring the sub main back to the main panel. i hate myself a lot today. not sure if i can keep this pace up for another 2-3 days, but if we want to get open on thursday i don't have much of a choice.

tbh, i did use a fancy sprayer for all of my painting. i had to tape off a few spots and use a shield around doorways etc., and a lot of the work was on a ladder/scaffold, but i never touched a roller or brush and i painted about 2500 sqft in 5 hours with lots of breaks. rollers are for pussies. i'm a tough manly man after this last 6 weeks of construction labor, so i can say stuff like that now.

that's what i thought too. that stuff doesn't weather very well on its own, so i figured i'd thin out some kilz outdoor primer and spray it on everywhere to help protect it a bit and to get the whitewashed look. it's not 100% what i was hoping for, but it's close enough that it will work (at least for the rest of this season). until the wife decides she wants a different color/effect, that is.

i'll post up a new thread once we're all built out. but sure, some progress pics. for reference, this is where we started in april of last year. the pole in the center of the shot is still there, so it's a good reference point for this one from yesterday morning after i got the fence & stage buildings whitewashed. pole is at the right side of this photo. asshole neighbor threw up the "no parking" signs a couple weeks ago because he's an asshole. people have parked on that lot for decades, and he got pissy when we were doing the building demo last summer because we had to use some of the lot for staging the demo area. i got his permission and everything, but he just turned into a jerk afterwards, so this is what we're dealing with on the west side of the lot. this is inside, looking at the bar. yesterday afternoon, after i got done whitewashing that building. i think the whitewash is a good look. it won't look so bland once we decorate and get everything else painted and cleaned up.

I spent all day outside yesterday, painting with my new sprayer. Got a good burn on the arms. I couldn't even scrub the paint off last night, the burn was so hurty.

this thread is getting ready to wind on down. plumber may be done as early as tomorrow night, finishing up the manifold, installing the water heater, and hanging fixtures. all the interior walls are paneled, and ceilings are getting done today. i have to finish building out the cooler, which i intend to work on this evening. power is getting finished up in the bar building tonight as well, including wiring in the breaker box and installing a few light fixtures. going to build the bar/back bar tops tomorrow night and get those installed, if everything else before it goes smoothly. as for outdoor areas, i got almost everything painted yesterday before i burned all the way through 10 gallons. got one more high wall and a fence row to hit and that will be done. still gotta build 7 more picnic tables, but that will probably wait til wed/thu. and we have to build that shed, which will probably take at least a couple hours. then finally, it's time to decorate and bring in all the greenery. and that's it. we're opening the doors on thursday, whether we're at 100% or not. i think we'll be pretty close.

spent all day yesterday working on the cooler. insulated between studs with styrofoam, and then added 4" of polyiso in layers on the inside of the stud walls. i have a couple gaps to fill and tape over, and that will be mostly done. it's raining again today. plumbers are in too, so carpenter thought it was better to just clear out and give the plumbers the space to do work. they're supposed to be finishing the rough-in and pressure testing the water lines. judging by their past performance, i doubt they get that much done today. assuming good weather this weekend (and that's never a safe assumption anymore), i'll be painting my ass off. i have enough product to do about 4,000sqft, and enough wall space to spray on every bit of that. if weather does not allow for painting, then i'll be doing more work on the cooler, installing the draft system and trimming out the shadowbox for the beer taps, and setting up the refrigeration system.

BUMPDATE as anticipated, last week was mostly a bust. materials didn't come into the store by time i was there to pick them up last week, so no movement on the cooler. but i did get bathroom fixtures and paint supplies and a few doors. going back into the city tomorrow night to pick up the rest of the stuff. got all the wiring pulled and started wiring in boxes and a couple fixtures last night. should get that finished up this evening. carpenter is trimming out some walls and hopefully paneling the restrooms today if he gets that far. then he'll be coming back tomorrow to panel the bar room and possibly ceilings. i'll be building the cooler all day thursday. then the plan for the weekend is to get power dropped into the second building and paint ~everything~. next week, bring the plumber in to install the fixtures, plug everything in, and get final inspections out of the way. then we can soft-open (hopefully) by next weekend. didn't get any new pics lately, but i will tonight...

hence the name. when i first realized that, i 🤯 all over the place.

bump because relevant again. a nasty one just blew across the area. it's calm out now, but we had some high winds and two bouts of hail with this one, plus up to 2" of rain (i'll get an official number when i check the gauge at home). but i got a pic of some mammatus clouds in the aftermath, out behind the bank. always one of my favorite cloud formations.

this cake has tiny, white, severed penises (penii?) on top of it. amusing. also. happy birthday, grandpa.