building

Sure would have been cool to open up the Revolution on 9/9/9, but we're not there yet.  However, we did celebrate this mini-milestone by ripping off half of the building facade yesterday.  After and arduous two-week wait for the scaffolding company to show up, the not-so-original yellow textured brick is gone and we've got a temporary plywood wall to look at for a change.  Next we've got to make the 3 front doors handicap accessible by removing the one step and ramp up to our building floor.  Then we'll pour concrete where the new planters will sit and then get started building the new glass storefront.  I think 3 storefront companies have come by in the last day trying to sell us their services.  I respect the intrepid entrepreneurs angling for business, but who goes ahead and rips out their storefront without a storefront company lined up already?

I think we broke a record Wednesday for the number of guys working in the building at once (19), and yes it was all guys.  The electricians are over halfway done with their rough work and we have new worklights in the brewery, which make the dusty tanks look even dustier.  Our big staircase going upstairs is getting close to doneness and almost all of the rough framing is finally complete.  We are supposed to have some city inspections soon, but Im not sure exactly when they are showing up.  Just heard that Half Acre passed all their inspections and is getting close to having their liquor license for their tasting room.  Head honcho Gabriel was relieved and said once the inspectors found out it was a brewery, they were real laid back.  Let's hope for the same good mojo.

Chef Jason and I are working on the menu and picking up a few pieces of equipment like this heavy-ass 60qt Hobart mixer.  It is built like a tank, which a good thing, because shortly after this picture was taken, it titled over in the pickup as we rounded a corner at low speed.  We lost a little tranny fluid from the gear box but otherwise it doesn't seem too worse for the wear. 

We're still hunting for a little smoker.  Some smoky menu items we're planning are the ubiquitous pulled pork sholder sandwich (for my wife), a smoked tofu sandwich for the vegheads and hickory-smoked chicken wings with a maple glaze.  We will definitely brew up a smoked porter sometime during the year to complement the flavors.

Because you are installing one our new eco-urinals that just use a pint of water to flush.   Have a pint, give a pint, right? I've talked about them before, and today they were installed so we can pour concrete right up to them.  

As the planning proceeds for the first floor concrete we have to deal with the fact that the center of the building has settled about four inches over the past hundred years.  A ramp here and a ramp there should do the trick.

Construction has been real slow lately.  Subcontractors not showing up and other subcontractors waiting for the guys who haven't shown up to complete their work before they show up.  I'm incredibly impatient, and the hot muggy weather is probably adding to that.  Today, although there was no one working in the restaurant space, the HVAC contractors were up on the roof preparing for the 45 tons of new cooling power we are bringing in (it's a big space).  It was probably 100+ up on that roof, so I'll stop complaining at least while seated in my comfy semi-air conditioned home office.

In addition to depleting the ozone layer with our new tonnage of AC, the Revolution is now officially fossil fueled with the acquisition of a 2003 Dodge Dakota:

 

All my hardcore bicycling friends are welcome to comment on my slow slide away from idealistic environmentalist to capitalist pig.

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.

We still haven't poured that final concrete floor yet, but we're getting closer. The plumbers finished up all the rough-in this week and most of the interior masonry work is now complete. We still need a couple steel staircases to be installed so we'll have a smooth transition with the new floor. Hopefully we'll pour next week, cause I'm starting to lose sleep over this delay. I'm self medicating with a nice dunkel lager tonight. The carpenters came back to the jobsite today and began work in the dinning room. Other than the plumbing for the bar which shoots up from the floor, this is the first visible sign of life in the front of the building. As we moved tanks and our collection of bourbon barrels into the basement, we've made room to start framing walls up front. Since our overall design calls for a pretty open space, there aren't many walls to frame up front. Here you can see the platform for our raised booth area taking shape beyond a wall of copper vent lines:

Other than that, I've been busy making tabletops and custom lighting fixtures. More about that when they are ready to show off. In addition to carpentry, the electricians are due to getting started any day now (tomorrow?) as is the HVAC subcontractor. Ordered the fireplace today and am about to order the pizza oven and the walk-in coolers. We'll probably wait to take delivery of the rest of the kitchen equipment for a few months when the dust settles. However, it will be hard to fit the pizza oven in later when all the walls are built and it will be a hell of a lot easier to put in place with the forklift.

Lots going on these days at the building. The masons should finish the tuckpointing of the second floor this week, which is about the last heavy, messy structural component of the project left. With less dust being made, sweeping the floor actually seems to make a difference now. I almost forgot what the hardwood floors looked like for a while.

By far the most impressive work of the last few weeks has been all the plumbing rough-in. Adam and the other Polish guys from Public Plumbing have installed all the sanitary and kitchen waste lines and starting to work on water and gas. They have also discovered my secret stash of Zimne Pivo, which has livened up their lunch breaks. With the plumbing walls up you get the feel of the bathroom layout and the kitchen is also taking shape. Because I'm around a lot, I've gotten to give my two cents on a lot of minor issues like where to route pipes, which I enjoy. Now that all the plumbing is done, we'll lay down a waterproof membrane on top of the subfloor before pouring concrete and tiling. We are about a week away from this last, major concrete pour which will allow us to put the brewhouse in place at last.

Since water is the biggest ingredient in beer, I've taken a keen interest in plumbing through my experience as a brewer. I've also learned the hard way about the downside of a poorly-designed plumbing system. Owning a restaurant has included my share of cleaning the grease traps and dealing with backups. At Handlebar, we wash dishes in the basement and all that waste goes into an injector pit, which tends to clog up and break the sump pump (about once every 15 months). Not even to mention the pain in the ass it is to carry all the dishes up and down the stairs. The building's downspout runs to a separate sump in the kitchen and causes issues in heavy rains. We've also had our share of leaky and freezing water lines that could have been avoided. I chock a lot of it up to buying a used restaurant and to the reality of the business, but I'm doing what I can to build a better system this time around. One tiny feature I'm most proud of this week is the custom grease trap I engineered. While most traps sit on the floor (or in it like in the HBar basement)next to the sink, ours sits on a stand I built in the basement. All of the kitchen waste lines from above come together into one big trap in the basement. The cool part is that I welded on a bottom drain to the trap so it can be cleaned easily. Just put a bucket below the trap and let 'er rip. Sorry no picture at the moment, but I'll get one up. And yes, I know it is sad that I am excited about a custom grease trap, but that's my world these days.

In other news, we have one new steel flight of stairs installed (four to go) and a new penthouse for the future flights of stairs to walkout on the roof through. No, we won't have a roof deck for a few reasons including fire code capacity limits, the need to beef up roof structure and all the HVAC equipment that will be up there. But come on a tour when we open and check out the Sears Tower view:

Lastly, in the woodcrafty segment of today's show work continues on turning old douglas fir beams into seating for the future space. Here's one bench before final sanding and finishing:

I've been using a cruddy Craftsman electric hand planer and belt sander to smooth them down, but my neighbor/brewery investor Nunzio Pizza dropped by to show me the real way to do it: with a hand plane. "It's coming out smooth!"

And you know he was right in that it is definitely the right tool for the job. There's also just a nice zen feeling when you work with it and it was nice to close my eyes and pretend I'm Roy Underhill for a few minutes. And while I was searching for that link I stumbled across a new-to-me word that connects good old Roy with Frank Zappa. Now that's why I decided to start a blog, to learn about what a Galoot is. Does my lack of familiarity with this term mean I need get more into Roy or Zappa? Perhaps both at the same time. Good night.

Although we have had a few slow spots, our gut rehab project is moving along at a good clip these days. After focusing on basement concrete, underground plumbing and building structure this winter, the interior walls are finally starting to go up. In a couple weeks, we should be finished pouring the brewery and kitchen floors and will start to put our equipment in place.  We lowered the brewery steam boiler into its final resting place last week and within minutes it was surrounded by metal studs with no chance of ever moving out in one piece. 

The City of Chicago has been installing a 'green alley' in the back for the last three weeks, which is both good and bad.  The old alley just dumped all of the rainwater into the city sewer system, increasing chances of a backflow problems when it rains hard like it did today. For the new green alley, they've dug an eight foot deep by four foot wide trench in the center the whole length of the alley.  It was lined with landscape fabric and filled with large gravel to serve as a big pool to hold rainwater.  They are in the midst of covering that all up with concrete and what look like 'fake' sewer grates which will just send water into the trench.  If the trench fills all the way up, there are underground concrete cisterns at the end of the alley to send excess to the sewer. 

Sounds like a neat way to build commercial alleys.  We'll see how it performs soon enough, but for now the main downside is that we haven't had alley access for weeks. That's made it hard to get deliveries and to do our own concrete work.  Today our concrete crew were a bit too creative in solving that problem.  If we can't get it in the back, let's just cut a hole in the hardwood floor and drop it down to the basement from the front!

Earlier this week, the plumbers started laying pipe for the kitchen and bathrooms on the first floor as well as making future connections for the second floor space.  Although we aren't opening the second floor right away, we are trying to minimize future disturbance required to get it open.  Later this week, the masonry crew will return to finish tuckpointing all the places where the brickwork will be exposed including upstairs.  Back in the middle of last century when it was home to a newspaper, our building was connected with the buildings on either side with passageways.  Some were closed up over time, but in one spot only a piece of plywood lies between us and neighboring resale shop Threads Etc..  While I'm sure the family that owns Threads would prefer for us to install a special tap just for them, the hole is finally getting filled.  

On the creative side of the project, I've been working away on our new sign.  Along with our name, there will be a big stainless steel fist clenching a shaft of barley that will go above the front door.  Still got to make a nice rusty star to go behind it. We've also hired someone to build our fancy new parallelogram-shaped bar.  Thought about doing that myself and then thought better of that idea. 

With demolition in the rear view mirror, the various crews are getting to work making a building for our brewery. The masons built a new wall on the rear of the building that you can see off the alley. The spent grain, recycling and trash will go in the spot that was carved out.

In related news, we got notice this week that the city is installing a green alley this spring behind our building. Now is kind of a tough time for us to lose access to the alley for two to three weeks, but overall it's a noteworthy addition. With our job and the Logan Square Kitchen to the north both in heavy construction, the alley is full of trucks all day long. Work is supposed to start Monday, but the CDOT engineer on site seemed pretty flexible to postponement, so we'll see how it goes. I'm driving to Bell's on Monday to pick up four more serving tanks we purchased, so hopefully I don't have to keep them in my backyard while the new porous asphalt cures.

On Friday, these guys were beaming as they delivered the steel superstructure for our brewhouse.

Although all our tanks sit on thick concrete pads, the kettle and mash tun apparatus known collectively as the brewhouse sits on the first floor. From what I've gleaned, it weighs about 8,000 lbs. empty and 20,000 lbs. totally full of liquid. We didn't get a manual with this system (the manufacturer is out of business and I don't think there ever was one) and my bathroom scale doesn't go that high. So, there is a series of steel i-beams below to carry the weight straight to some new footings in the basement floor.

The third big structural action is all the carpentry that is set to begin next week. We received a load of about 100 laminated veneer lumber (LVL) joists:

You would think that an old loft building like ours would be strong enough to hold a restaurant without too much extra reinforcement, but it isn't. To get the second floor up to 100 lbs. per square foot. to comply with the Chicago Building Code we need to make the main beam wider. We also need to add lots of structure in the roof to hold up the new AC units, and more LVLs in the floors around all the new openings and to beef up our 2nd floor grain storage area.

Although the volume of virgin, engineered lumber we are using is astounding, I'm doing my part to reuse a bit of the old stuff we had to remove. I've been making tabletops out of the old 3x14 old-growth douglas fir joists. I'm leaving one edge in its rough, 100-year old state but the planer and joiner make the wood look brand new. It's no burled walnut or tiger maple, but compared to the fir you can buy these days, it has a pretty, tight grain. Once again, this is also just an excuse to buy some cool tools, but I'm happy with the results so far:

So this is the last official 'before' photo of our space courtesy of photo-friend T.C. O'Rourke. Look closely for the recently punched hole in the copper kettle. The tenants moving out poked it with the forklift, but lucky they didn't damage the stainless tank inside, just the copper skin. Their insurance is paying for replacement of the copper and that is pretty much the only bad news around the joint these days:

The best relic of our building's past is the keyed drive gear from the old printing press. It is sitting in the basement about four feet up on a concrete foundation that supported the motor, which is gone. I'm waiting until we open the floor above to pull it and figure out what to do with it since it's pretty heavy. It's greasy as hell too, but that is a good thing since it houses bearings so one of the gears can spin independently. In the picture you can see the shaft it was once mounted on: Part of Saturday's deluge found its way into the basement, which is now pretty much empty so nothing got damaged. In a brewery you want nicely sloped floors that carry the inevitable wet mess to a floor drain. Not exactly what we have inherited as you can see, but that's on the docket for improvement soon:

We received our building permit from the city this past week and we're now working on closing our construction loan with Banco Popular. This is that door to walk through before we start construction. Fortunately, we've got a standing commitment from them for this project or we'd be in deep doo doo these days. Banks don't like to lend to start-up small businesses (restaurants in particular) and our woeful national economy would likely have been the straw to break our camel's back. Other lenders have since told me that their changing underwriting rules would not let them approve our project anymore. Banco Popular hasn't flinched in their commitment so I'll put out the good work for them once again. I know there are other businesses out there now hunting for loans that are having tough times. Hopefully all the interest rate drops will get those loans flowing again. I'm certainly glad we didn't lock in our loan rates a few months ago.