Compared to that roadway saw the jackhammer was indeed a relief. Got a lot done and the tool is back at the rental shop.
This is needed because the building has one working floor drain – some of the 40 year old cast iron is rusted through; we are adding functionality requiring drains & electricity in new locations; and the walk-in fridge/freezer floor needs to be insulated.
The time to replace building sewer has come; most of the floor sinks & floor drains don’t actually drain. I had never used a roadway walk behind saw before. Hopefully never again! The sonic force is nuts. Payment is by day plus millimeter of blade use. Thankfully the cuts were do-able in a day, and as no one wrote down the blade diameter there was no extra charge for any excessive use which may or may not have actually taken place. As far as I am concerned this tool can stay at the rental shop henceforth. The bathrooms are luckily too small for such a saw. The rental place has a handheld model which can’t be set down while running. Bent over indoors holding a gas motor spinning a disk which can cut through seemingly anything? At the moment I choose the tranquility of a jack hammer.
The Sage came with several top-quality appliances. One of them is the Rancilio MD80 Coffee Grinder. This grinder can pump out 7 lbs. of coffee per hour! It took longer than that to clean it let me tell you. Thankfully I found a video showing the process. It is anybody’s guess how old the scraped off goop truly was.
It is exciting making the equipment pristine once again. This grinder is the first appliance to be made shiny and not the least filthy of the bunch by far.
Like having food and drink prepared with clean equipment? We are working hard to make it happen. Please consider donating to support the re-invention of the Sage so progress doesn’t stop.
These days it has been cutting and soldering to get water from the mechanical room south. So far we have made it into where the bakery used to be with a 3/4″ for hot and one for cold as well as the 1/2″ return line for the recirculation loop. All water in copper will be filtered. This feeds the commercial restrooms, both apartments, the bar, the ice machine and clothes washing machine.
Not yet in place is the 3/4″ pex for carrying cold water to the toilets and handwash sinks. The commercial kitchen is going to have its own on demand water heater fed by its own 3/4″ pex whose water will not be filtered. There will be spigots in the different sections of the kitchen with filtered water, as you no doubt guess, serviced by copper pipe.
We’ve started on reinstalling the 70-gallon water heater in the new mechanical room. This same heater will be part of the hydronic heating system via a water-to-water heat exchanger. Note the socket needed to remove the old and add the new was 1 1/16”.
We have a gas-powered power washer on hand. So far the kitchen and chocolate studio have been exfoliated.
We continue to narrow down choices on what is going where. Next up is a meeting with the electric company to see just what is available. Current service is 200A, the transformer has 400A. EV chargers and 180 degree dishwashers amperage totals add up fast.
Neika is here!!!!! We are so happy our friend from totally back in the day is in town to share in the Sage’s makeover and add her marvelosity. Neika brings experience as an Executive Chef along with other superpowers including the ability to facilitate a project or process getting from here to there. She arrived on the evening of March 17 and we presented The Plan to Michael Bertin on March 21 at 2PM. We were back and forth, in and out, marking and moving all weekend. Total fun.
And so with further ado and no gilding the lilly, check out the kitchen plan!! We had such a great time. In this masterpiece one can find the Chocolate Studio, Bakery, Coffee/Gelato/Soda Fountain, Bench seating in the old office, the to be build central table, stairs to the Mezzanine, Hot Food Prep, Cold Food Prep, Wash Room, Walk In Refrigerator & Freezer, Waldo, Mop Sink, 4 Hand Wash Sinks, a Vegetable Wash Station, Hot and Cold Pickup Locations, 4 Speed Racks, the Masonry Heater, Dry Storage (with the standalone refrigerators), and, at long last, where the Mechanical Room will be.
Inventory is well underway, appliances are being reviewed and given attention, and what is needed being itemized. We may have located a combi oven in Taos. Fingers crossed.
We are moving along. The photos below show the continuing work on the mezzanine. Yesterday materials arrived for the west side of the roof extension which is going to have a lower ceiling than the mezzanine.
Here are recent perspectives on the interior demo state. We are closing in on the end. One of the last areas is removing the rest of the old roof seen on the left in the lower of the two photos. At the moment the bare 2x are visible as the drywall and insulation have been taken out. The plywood path seen in the same photo on the floor covers the mostly filled trench containing the incoming air duct for the masonry heater which can be seen holding up one pair of the scaffolding wheels.
