Two New Pairs of Keys
It's Saturday night! these posts are getting later and later. I'm listening to the sort of country jam album "an old smile" by Macabre Plaza. On my second(?) coffee of the day. For me like 6oz of drip coffee in the morning is normally enough, it's been a long day haha. It's been a week of getting up early and staying up late.
On Tuesday I met with our sign maker
I went out and met the owner of Shark Signs downtown, he was a super nice guy and we talked about Zaba's!!! a little coffee shop on the beach in St. Augustine. I used to live down the road and knew the owner so we connected over it. I haven't gotten up early and had a friendly professional conversation like that in so long, it's what I love most about doing small business and it filled my soul. The sign is a little ways away, we should have a temp "coming soon" pylon highway sign soon.
On Wednesday it was my birthday, I got keys to the building. and found a house.
I took the day off and met with the property manager early, the place is a mess and they couldn't even sweep the bugs up before handing it over. but it felt really nice to be in there at last. I've been working on paper since February so to actually be in the space was refreshing. especially after weeks of saying "next week" or "sometime soon"
Later on that day I toured a house with my partner and it was perfect. we're going to move in next month. For the last 6 years I've moved at least once a year, via apartments or friends kindness, for one reason or another. So this is also a surreal resting place. the lease is 2 years. the cycle is over.
We got breakfast at Brew Coffee in downtown jax, and i went to go have more coffee with my mom later that day then visit friends. it was a long and excellent birthday.
Today I went in and put down some tape.
I paid JEA and got the lights on, then went out this morning to sweep the shop for the first of many times. it was pretty rough, the worst part was thinking I could pick up some fake wood boards laying on the ground, only to find out they were covered in undried wood glue. after cleaning my hands I tossed them in the trash bag, which they immediately stuck to and ripped apart -_-'''
once the floor was clean I taped out where things would go based on my 3d model. It definitely looks a little different in person, thankfully we're going to have more space for seating because I made the bar too long haha. I want to do one accent seating piece, so I'm thinking of building a bench area and then having some tables and chairs too.
Here's the print I was using today to space everything out.
The space is about 600 sq/ft
i'm going to shorten the bar vertically a bit, and have that bench on the bottom right wrap around almost like a mirror image, two L shaped tetris pieces. I'd like a mural on the right hand wall, and some more seating on the left hand side.
Unfortunately I have double doors (thankfully they open out) meaning my seating has to be creatively compressed towards the walls.
Designing in 3d has been a lot more work than I anticipated, but not at all impossible for a beginner. For anyone interested I did this in google SketchUp. I promise that if you're looking into beginner 3d like this it works great, just be mindful of importing too many big models as it runs off cloud.
I'll be happy to share some more images once I'm more confident in the space, right now it looks nothing like this and has a bunch of partition walls, it used to be a dog grooming spot haha.
Now that I have the space and an idea of the layout, next is trying to pin down an architect to advise me legally. I'm excited for what's to come, this next month is going to be super busy! thanks for reading!
- Elias
