Thursday, April 26, 2012

Some days are easy

Today all I have done is answer the phone and make calls. The city of Orange Beach would call me, tell me what they needed, then I called the contractors ,told them and they took care of business. Easy day ! Oh yeah, I had to pick tile for the shop. Both choices were pretty ugly so it was easy. I'm not paying for the flooring so I guess being given any choices is nice. In the retail part of our place there will be rugs to hide the floor and in the kitchen it won't mater. It's just a floor. As long as the health inspector likes it, I like it. Tomorrow Scott and I will be making a trip to Low's for a sink,mixer, and maybe a water heater. Also we will be going by Coffee Headz to see if Kathy has any extra equipment I need. Talked to her on the phone the other day and she said she had enough equipment to supply a whole coffee shop ! Wish I had found her 3 weeks ago ! Things are looking good ! Although we are still unsure where we will be living in the next few months. Oh well, we'll be somewhere.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

We go to an auction





















Babs, (Rhonda's mom) was headed to an auction and had seen some items that she thought we might want for the cafe. We drove up to Thomasville and stayed the night there, then onto to Selma, Al to do some bidding. We did a little sight seeing of historic Selma on the way. Once there Rhonda successfully bid on a peanut display rack, (we'll display chip bags) and a table w/four cafe style chairs.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Permits

We turned in the application for the Baldwin County Health Permit. $150 for turning in the application and another $150 ( a yearly fee ! ) for a full serves restaurant permit. But the good news is ,even after taking a quick look at the plans he Did Not Laugh at me ! I was so nerves... Not sure why but I was.All Kip said about our plans is we need to move the mop sink( he wants it outside, our plumber wants it inside) and we are not sure the dumpster pad has a drain. Scott seemed to be bothered by the mop sink and I was more concerned about the dumpster drain . Guess we got all the worries covered ! On the way home we stopped at the electric company and paid the $1780 deposit ! To have the electricity turned on. I had planned on stopping at Foley Restaurant and Kitchen Supply store to see about buying more equipment but I had spent all my little Brian could spend in one day. Next is the City of Orange Beach Permits. I hope to get them to the city tomorrow.These fees don't have to be paid until they are excepted. We stopped at Coffee Heads, a local coffee shop just to check things out. It was so intimidating ! They had all new beautiful equipment. They're coffee was good, not great. It was a cute place. I hope ours will be a place with a lot of character and great coffee and great food. The prices at the Coffee Heads were high ! $5 milk shake, $4.50 smoothie, $1.75 for reg.drip coffee. I'm afraid our prices will have to be just as high. When we got home today we had newly born kittens waiting for us. Well, they are hidden from us under the kitchen cabinets. We don't know how many are what they look like. I'm going to try to write on this blog more often. It's been too hard the last few weeks because every time we moved forward we would meet with someone and would be set back at least two steps. I'm not sure even now that we are making any progress.......all I am sure of is that I am spending a lot of money.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Civil engineer, shopping, and an artistic stress release for us.

We met with Randy Arp today of Stiffler Engineering. We got alot of answers, found more concerns about our design, and realized we were going ahead with our efforts of being our own general contractor. Randy said he would charge us $2000 to $3000 to draw up floor plan, he doesn't like to do that work! We had been sent to him with the idea it would be less than $1200 for plans, wern't we surprised!

Then we stopped at Foley Restaurant Kitchen Supply, were we bought a used glass two door fridge and a used glass door freezer, $1590, and $950.

Rhonda has been on eBay also, got a Rancilio 2 group espresso machine (red) and a espresso bean grinder (red).





then we put some lights in a clear plastic box and traced our logo on to tee shirts, get yours now, no two are  alike, be the first on your block!