Page 1

I was very excited about getting the permit, and even more excited when the plumber actually stared the work. I should have known things would go from sheer excitement to complete disappointment when the plumber showed up on Monday morning with some rough looking characters in tow. Those characters were his sons or his apprentices as he called them and his grandson, who was all of 12 years old.  Their first order of business was to break the floor, which meant bringing in a high power drill and actually breaking through the concrete to lay the pipes for the water lines for the kitchen. This was not an easy job; they really worked hard trying to break the concrete. 

In the mean time we finally got an electrician that was good enough and reasonable, at least his job would be easy, the painters were next and the carpenter for beams and walls.  Everything was in place and going well, so it seemed.  I was still optimistic that our June opening date was possible. In the meantime the biggest and most expensive part of this project was underway, building the kitchen.

I found myself busy all the time, getting only four to five hours of sleep on most nights. Most nights I would be online line ordering the little things that sometimes are forgotten in the big picture until early in morning hours. I would wake up in the middle of the night and write things down that I had dreamt about so I would not forget them.

Since I was working from home, I had some flexibility, but not much, so while I was on the many conference calls, I did most of my furniture, dinnerware, wine glasses and some equipment ordering online. I ordered most of the furniture from Target and Sam’s Club, during our Monday morning conference calls, multitasking was very strong skill for me at that time.  I was so excited and my team mates knew I would be retiring and opening the bistro in June, and they were excited as well, and I suspect they knew I was doing some multitasking, so they would not pile work on me and I was very grateful for that.

Everyday my sister Sharon and I would check in on the progress of the plumbers and the drilling, progress was very slow and I was getting very disappointed. Sharon was very good at making sure they were working and not goofing off, but still it was over a week, and they were still busting up the floor.  Finally we asked what was taking so long, and apparently they under estimated the job, the concrete was much thicker than they had thought. They estimated the drill rental would be for a couple of days and now they had to keep it for over a week, meaning we were now a week off schedule.

Just in case you didn’t know, all new upfits in Mecklenburg County require you have GC or general contractor represent you. You will not get your final certificate of occupancy unless your GC gets it and without your certificate of occupancy you can not open. This would be an expensive lesson for me, but in the end, I got lucky and it really paid off.  

Like every other service, hiring a general contractor could make or break your project.  Take my advice; hire an experienced general contractor, if I had hired an experience general contractor, I believe we may have opened on time in June.  Lesson learned!

The general contractors job is oversee your project, make sure everyone is doing their job correctly, and a good general contractor will be at the job site everyday dealing with the contractors doing the job, they insure you don’t fail your inspections, and if you do, they deal with the inspectors.  And believe me; you will need someone to deal with the inspectors. Our general contractor showed up only when we called him, and even then he would show up after the contractors had left.  

So when the plumbers seemed to be taking their time, I called our general contractor and he showed up after the plumbers had left, checked the progress of the job and left. Remember you should hire an experience general contractor and they cost about ten to fifteen thousand dollars.  We were on a fixed budget and our funds were running very low and the project wasn’t even halfway complete.  Panic!

The next morning the plumbers were back and by the end of the day, the drilling was complete, they had broke all the concrete, the next morning they started removing the concrete and digging all the dirt out the hole to lay the pipes.  Hallelujah!  Over the next few weeks I began to see slow progress and Easter was right around the corner and so was my June grand opening date.  Nothing could be done until the plumbers complete their job, and time was going by rather quickly.

Finally enough of the kitchen upfit was done so the painters could come in and paint the walls.  Choosing the right paint was very import to me. I wanted the bistro to have the rich colors of red wine and yet enough light colors so the sunlight could shine through.  I chose merlot for the back wall where the bar would be and familiar beige for the entrance where most of the light would shine into the room.  When the painting was complete, I knew I had made the right decision, enough light and the richness of the merlot added the warmth I wanted.  Finally something was going my way, the colors were perfect!