Construction Update: 6/11/09

Construction is still slogging along at 2323 N. Milwaukee. The carpenters built a few more walls this week and we got another flight of steel stairs. One more stair from the brewery down to the fermentation cellar and we'll be ready to pour the concrete floor. All the coordination required for this element of the project has definitely slowed down our pace. A lot of other work is waiting for the floor to be poured including tiling, building the remaining walls and all of the electrical and HVAC work.

Upstairs we have new glass block windows (replacing concrete block) which let the sun shine into the back of the space. Jim and I have continued working on the new dining room tables. On the roof, the curbs for the HVAC units arrived, which marks the start of that trade.

Today's big downer was the freight elevator, which went down for the second time so far. The elevator was so old that it ran up and down on wooden rails, one of which just split:

This time might be the last for this ancient device, as the cost to repair outweighs what we'd expect to get out of it down the line. This leaves us without a way to move our malt up to the second floor other than on our backs. People often ask if we've run into any unanticipated setbacks as we've opened the walls and got to work. I used to say not really, but now we've got a certifiable issue to confront. We can probably make do without it and just wait for the passenger elevator to be installed. Otherwise, a new freight elevator would run into the six digits. This shouldn't directly affect our construction pace since we aren't using the elevator for anything in particular right now. I guess I should have expected that one since it was such an old unit, but I just assuming since it was working it would keep on keeping on. My mistake.