Drawings and city departments and contractors! Oh my!

It has been furiously busy these last couple weeks. My designer and I have been working on the plans and revising them sometimes daily. I didn't realize she needed make/model of everything that hooked up to plumbing, gas or electrical. I hadn't chosen specific brands of equipment so I scrambled. In the mean time I found a guy who gave me really good prices on equipment. What I didn't know is that he gave me prices on equipment that was available right then and not stuff that I could have at any time. Humm. So my drawings are really just 'thoughts' rather than 'decisions'.

My designer is a wonderful woman named Chris Stafford. If anyone reading this needs a space designer in Sacrament, she is the one. She is understanding and incredibly responsive. So, Chris and I went to the Health Department to have a preliminary review of the plan. There were discussions among a few of the Health Department people on how far the grease trap can be from my space and where the hand sink had to go so I didn't need a splash guard. In the end we got a preliminary 'atta girls'.

I didn't read my previous blog before starting this so I don't know if I mentioned it. I spent 3 hours chalking the floors with the placement of walls, doors and equipment to make sure it would look like I thought. It was a great exercise and gave me a spacial reference rather than just something on a diagram.

Oh, I forgot to say that I bought a 7'x7'x8' walkin. White. 4" insulated floor. Cool huh? $5000. Half price. I hit a sale at Economy Restaurant Supply and picked up pots, pans, measuring utensils and two-5qt commercial Kitchenaids. I bid on a second Robo Coupe food processor on Ebay and won. My bedroom now looks like a kitchen supply store. My hall has food processors, 35 qt pots and a hand sink.

Yesterday we had a come-to-Jesus meeting with the contractors involved. The landlord's agent, his contractor, my contractor and I met at the space to go over a myriad of questions. The landlord has to do a lot of work and my contractor didn't want to have to tear his stuff down to get work done. We also found out that the landlord's contractor is not under contract for this job and the guy builds houses not commercial buildings. My gut wrenched when I heard that one. My contractor is talking to the landlord's agent to see if he would be interested in a bid. I would be thrilled if that worked out. My stuff would get done on time and I would not have to worry about war-ing contractors.

We've written more detail into the lease because we modified my space a bit. It appears that if someone wants to buy a building they need to occupy 51% of it to quality for an SBA loan. The building I'm in is still for sale. We moved a few feet around and made that work. We also included all the things the landlord is responsible for to finish out the building and all that I am responsible for. There were issues about how much weight the roof would hold for the HVAC. My contractor put the HVAC inside the building and the condensors on the roof which solved that problem. I added a clause that if the landlord's people held up my people from doing their work that I would not pay rent. All this is going to the landlord for approval today and I expect it to be signed.

Final drawings are almost done and ready to send to the subcontractors for their detailed information. We should be submitting plans to the Building and Health departments next week. After that the construction starts. I didn't know you could start construction before permits were issued.

Holy cow! This is starting to be real instead of just chalk drawings on the floor.