Another messy day.

Today my good friend Scott and I attacked the now infamous brick wall with angle grinders,

...with this kind of attachment, I think it's called a cup-brush:



Basically the brick still has a lot of cement on it, which chips off easily. Applying the grinder to the wall produces violent cement-shrapnel shooting in your face, as well as sparks because the brick is stone. It's a horrible process and hurts the skin, but getting off the loose cement was important enough. We don't need any free non-dairy creamer for the customers coffees! Here's a couple of pics from the mess:

Me:

Scotty:

Me:

Scotty:

We're almost done. Tomorrow I'll put in a couple of hours and see if I can finish it off.

-Ryan

UPDATE: Ok, so forget sandblasting!

After much thought, and realizing that I was just being cheap, I went ahead and got the interior sandblasted yesterday. The place looks amazing now, and it was definitely worth the $1400, mess, and hassle.


The city of Santa Monica is super strict about every aspect of starting a business, and sandblasting is no exception. They will only let you do it between the hours of 10am and 3pm, so it's very hard to pull it off. I had the crew from Supreme Sandblasting come out at 8am, so they could prep the ceiling and walls and right at 10am they started. Instantly it looked like a total warzone as you can see...

(Keep in mind this is in the middle of the day. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face after a few hours, with all the airborne sand particles.)

I'll take some "after" photos tomorrow morning. The place is really transformed and is beginning to look stylish! Nice!

Update 3.13.08

So after some drama with the electricity, and cleaning the place up after the crazy demolition, the place is now a perfect empty canvas waiting to be built upon!

Next step: getting the approved final plans so we can start installing plumbing. This should happen by Monday. Until then, I'm going to clean off the brick wall to take down some of the concrete residue.

-Ryan

Brick wall is done!

At long last, the 58' brick wall is exposed! Yesterday myself, a subcontractor, Brett (my bro) and Scott (friend and talented artist) went crazy on the wall with air-hammers and after about 9 total hours chipped all the plaster off to reveal the 85 year old brick wall, in all of it's glory!


I met the subcontractor Julio there at about 8:30am, Brett and Scott showed up soon after, and we were finally done around 6pm. I swear I was high up on the scaffolding for at least 6 of the hours. Today all of us are totally sore... it looks amazing though! Thanks for the help guys! Glad no one fell!

Demolition!!!!

Yesterday and today were spent deep in the trenches, tearing down the plaster wall and demolishing the freestanding walls in the space. Also, the subcontractors are going to chip the plaster off of the wall today, to expose the brick. The place is trashed, but it's fun to destroy stuff! Plus, the subs have to clean it up.. not yours truly.