Restaurant rebuild

Very, very nice! That’s a heap of accomplishment there. Lots of man hours I’m sure.

-- Carl Rast, Pelion, SC

Show off :P

Looks great hun.

-- The wood slayer - Yes dear I did plan to make more kindling out of that wood I have been drying for the last year - honest!

Great project. Hope you’re not on your toe to complete this big project.
Keep it up Rob!

-- masrol, kuala lumpur, MY.

Beautiful wood.

Great job.

-- Father of two sons. Both Eagle Scouts.

WOW you must have alot of help to finish 2 of these in 2 months..Nice Work..

the second restaurant is not quite finished ,and no, I have just one helper , mostly on the primary side . Thanks for the compliments , but the wood itself is the real showoff !

Do you saw up your own lumber? Prefab everything before hand ? If so how long did that take to
sand,& seal before you started the job?

2 in 2 months?? !!!! ??? !!

this looks amazing. A little video tour when you are done would be great :)

-- ~ Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

Nice & rustic!

I am a Lumber Jock…not a delivery jock and not an installation jock. Restaurant #1 has corporate in Dallas, architect in SFrancisco, contact in Marina del Rey, jobsite somewhere in L.A. All communication was by phone, fax and email. I helped on design, bid, fabricated,kiln dried the components. I check my email, fax and phone about every hour, but save my responses, bids, paperwork, etc. for night time for my wife to do when she gets home from her job. Restaurant #2 I deal directly with the owner and it was originally to build him a fancy front entry system. I did visit the restaurant once, and told him I could bid an entire millwork package. I did all my rough measuring at that time and emailed him the bid within a few hours. The front door was not even mentioned. Meanwhile the kiln is cooking #1 .
That night I designed a flow pattern to extrude that much material through the shop in a very short period of time. (Special drying racks for finish work, moved a planer so I wouldn’t have to double pick up the wood, ordered extra blades, finish material etc.) I have a 40’ long torsion box table that holds parts on one end, finish in the middle, dry rack 2/3 of the way down, and stack to the roof finished pieces at the end where the door is. About every other day, I had the owner come up and fill a trailer with dimensioned, finished pieces for his crew to install at the site.
At this point, as a 2 man shop, I spend most of my time behind the slider. I have my helper hopping between the sawmill or individual equipment stations, all of which have power feeders. I lease time on 2 large CNC machines and have good support from trucking, crane and logging companies (and wife and dogs). I keep a tight loop with my suppliers on finishes, blades, oils, etc. and have absolutely zero tolerance for other people in business that fail me once. Profits go into buying more and more reclaimed rough stock from an ever increasing pool of resources or machinery. In my spare time I study woodworking.