May, June, July, August Updates (I know, I'm the worst at blogging)

Aug 19, 2019

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Guys, I’m so sorry. I was already terribly inconsistent with blogging, and the craziness of the bar has only caused that to be even more true. I’ll do my best to recap things through the last few months to get you up to speed…

1. If you remember my HVAC woes from the previous entry, we did end up finding someone that could do the job within our meager budget and we now will shamelessly plug All Weather Heating and Cooling for anyone that needs HVAC services in the Durham area. They seriously saved our asses and the duct work at the bar looks fantastic.
2. Drywall was completed in a surprisingly short amount of time. Like, two days. They didn’t do the best of jobs and we had to have them come fix a couple of things, but still, it was pretty damn impressive for the size of the place.
3. I made the dopest bartop ever using locking hardwoods painted different colors and then pouring epoxy over it. It has some areas where it’s not perfect, but it took so much work to get it looking like it does, I don’t even care.
4. Our awesome IT guy from On Tap Solutions set up our sound system, security cameras, and the public and private networks.
5. We passed our plumbing inspection! Thank god for running water. You seriously don’t know how much you miss it until it’s gone.
6. I painted every wall white. Yeah, it took FOREVER.
7. I painted the floor and covered it with a wet look sealer; it looks amaaaaaazing.
8. Refurbished some old chairs I got at an auction that will have a home in the private party space.
9. We got our ABC Permit! It’s a temporary permit and we’ll get the permanent one once they do an audit to make sure we’ve been set up with the appropriate distributors and whatnot.
10. We passed our fire inspection and the bar was approved to have an occupancy of 97 people! We’ll get one of those cool occupancy cards after we pass our final building inspection.
11. My dad and brother came from Kansas to help with the bar and holy god, did we get a lot done in the 10 days they were here. You seriously underestimate how long some of these little things take (putting hardware on barn doors and cabinets, putting wheels on a keg cooler, etc) and having their help probably saved us from having to push back the bar opening yet another month. I think the biggest and most noticeable change they helped with was making some awesome tables for the bar. They look so good and it brings me to tears every time I look at our original plans from the architect and see how it’s come to life.
12. Our Point of Sale system, Spot On POS, was installed! Still have to set up all the inventory in it, but having the system in house is great.
13. We had another pop up event! Bull City Ciderworks reached out and asked us to do mini terrariums again on August 2nd. Since we’re broke and need money, we happily agreed and it was a huge success that sold out of all 50 tickets. Bitches really love terrariums, man.

That’s a pretty good summary of it, but it’s just so hard to really recap EVERYTHING that’s gone into the bar the last few months. Starting in May, we started having not just one or two subcontractors there, but two or three at a time. My contractor became super busy with other projects that came up, so it’s been very much on my shoulders to make sure people are showing up when they say they will, follow the plans, fix anything that the inspectors bring up, etc. As you can imagine, having to be at the bar every day to oversee construction means that your administrative tasks like answering emails, posting blog entries, etc were the things that I cut from my immediate to-do lists in order to make room for the mental energy and patience required of managing construction projects.

So what’s left now that we’ve checked so much off the list? In terms of construction, we just have our building inspection left to do, unless there’s something I’m unaware of. Ending construction is only part of getting this bar open, though. We have people we need to hire, POS systems to get up and running, craft kits to make, decorating to do, and beer/wine to get in house and ready for selling. Yes, that is still a long list and each of those tasks will require a lot of back and forth before they’re done, but we’re at the point of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re through. Catch you on the flip side!

-Virginia