It seems things are moving much more quickly on our renovation now that we have professionals involved (more photos here). This week, Steve and Mike (our carpenters) finished framing the bathroom and utility room, framed the front wall, and removed the rest of the staircase in the back of the store. We now need to do quite a bit of work to make the back corner of the store presentable (plaster repair, building a railing, painting, etc.):
Our plumber, Scott, installed all of the supply lines and drains this week. Below, you can see the rough plumbing for the bathroom sink, the toilet and (in the background on the right) the tub.
We hit a bit of a snag with our tankless hot water heater, though. We were planning to use a Stiebel Eltron electric unit, but the power company told us that the maximum load required would be too much for the infrastructure on our block--which seems pretty incredible to me, but there it is. We've already purchased the unit and can't return it ... so, if you know anyone who's interested, send us a line.
Instead, we'll probably go with a tankless gas model, most likely a Bosch. There are a few negatives with a gas model that we were trying to avoid: 1) gas tankless water heaters are more expensive initially and, 2) they require venting (which increases installation cost). This changes our plans a bit, as we need to figure out where to vent the unit, but I think we can figure things out in the end.
I also got up onto our roof for the first time ever, in search of two spots that seem to be leaking. I think I found them and I'm pretty certain I was able to patch them with some nasty black goo. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take the camera with me, so we don't have any photos from or of the roof. Maybe next time!
It's neat to see this taking shape. And let me know if the black goo fails -- we're going to have to patch the roof of the shipping container our biodiesel co-op is trying to set up as a self serve distribution point and nasty black goo is the best idea we've got at the moment. The guy who's running things will probably slop some on when things dry out over here.