The Fruited Plain

My blog has been comatose over the past four months and the reason is "The Fruited Plain." Let me explain. In late August, my daughter and her husband purchased a building on Main Street in Sioux Center and began the long process of gutting it and creating from the space a coffee shop/wine bar to be called "The Fruited Plain."
And just like that, I had a job--volunteer laborer. Whatever needed to be done, I did or attempted to do along with a large number of volunteers. We tore out the old ceiling and the loose insulation--by the dumpster-full; we pulled nails out of old 2x4's reclaimed from the old stud-walls. We put up new studwalls and covered them with sheetrock--in some cases 4 layers of 3/4 inch drywall, 2 layers on either side (for a firewall). We mudded the joints and primed and painted and applied a clay like substance to the walls. We cut trenches for plumbing and elctricity in the cement floor. We removed old paint from the interior brick walls to create the industrial look. We planed a thousand feet of rough-cut ash to be used for trim wood and the building of booths. We sanded and stained and varnished and installed trim wood and floorboards. We took rough cut wooden beams that we found above the ceiling and hung themfrom the ceiling of the party room called the Backroom Bistro. And A hundred other tasks.

But now it is finished (sort of), and open, and I am proud to post some pictures of the finished product.