Blocks Come Tumbling

The excavation team came to the site today to take the white structure off the back of the building. It's amazing how much better the building looks with that addition gone.

One Window Down!

Brent got to throw a brick through the front window today. We had to break one of the front windows to allow the concrete truck to pour front footers. Check out the set up at the end of the video. They made a triangle out of wood, which was placed up against the window to collect all of the glass ... pretty creative!

Second Concrete Day

The forms are built and the cement truck is ready to pour into the west side basement. Anchor screws will be imbedded into the concrete, which will be used to secure our structural steel beams. We used the concrete shoot again, but still got seriously splashed with wet concrete.

Progress continues in several areas of the project. The brick is clean, but still needs to have the dust blown out. Once the blow out process is complete, the brick will be sealed. The east side concrete will be completed within the next two weeks. The structural steel erection will start very soon, which will lead to framing and mechanical systems installation.

First Concrete Day

There were a couple of large holes under the building. In order to provide more stability and strength to the building, we brought in flow fill cement. Tom created cement shoots to allow the cement to run straight from the truck to the hole. They worked pretty well, but we have a new respect for cement workers. The flow fill concrete was complete, which allows us to move forward to building forms for our next cement project … foundation footers.

We hung our “Coming Soon” banner today!

Moving Dirt

Today we brought in the backhoe. We dug a hole to expose the gas line so that the local utility company could cap the gas line. Once the line is capped, we no longer have to worry about hitting a gas line and can move forward with our demolition. The intention was to have the hole ready for the utility to come to the building in the next few days to complete the capping process. The bad news … while the excavator was digging the hole, he hit the gas line. The good news … we got the gas line capped and the hole filled back in today.

Ready to Sandblast!

The tin is gone from the ceiling and the walls are free of plaster. We finished removing the tin ceiling tiles on the other side of the building this week. Now it’s time to sandblast the brick. I am so excited to get the brick cleaned up and ready to seal. The tin is in pretty bad shape, but we are going to do everything we can to salvage as much of it as possible. We may try to sell the tin that we don’t use to someone who wants original antique ceiling tiles. The demolition process is getting close to conclusion, but we still have a couple hard days ahead of us.

Check out my little helper!

Better View from the Back

We spent some time this week cleaning up the back of the building. We removed gas pipes, an old satellite dish, a big white venting piece and cut down a tree.

The bidding process is still presenting challenges for us. I have made a few changes to the architectural plans, which required second bids from several of the contractors. It has been fun working with the vendors to select lighting, flooring and the other finishes that everyone will see.