Progress and more progress

I’ve been chewed out for not updating his regularly and too few pictures, so here it is.  The problem is that the work that is being done is hard to see in pictures and some of it is more demo than building.  Anyway…The plumbing and electrical are almost done.  We had our electrical inspection on Monday and they found 3 things, one which could be a big deal.  The funny one is we have to have a line within 15 feet of the building for a lighted sign.  We don’t have to have the sign, but we have to have the line.  Plumbing inspection is supposed to happen today.  We picked up light fixtures and looked at counter tops on Tuesday.  I love the Corian product in sage green and white but whew! expensive.  Hopefully, we can go with it since we don’t have that much counter to do.  Afterall, I saved alot of money redoing the cupboards myself.  Sheetrock is going up, so we should be able to paint next week.  Then you see some pictures.  Speaking of which, I have 17 pages done in the scrapbook.  RJ has been finishing up the bar, adding the end piece and patching the corner.  I get to sand and finish now.  I have also selected a Point of Sale (POS).  I know it is overkill for our size but it will help me keep track of inventory and speed up the ringing of sales.  Oh yeah, and how could I forget, we harvested this week.  A much smaller harvest than last year, but beautiful grapes, no mildew whatsoever.  Pictures below.

Bar Staining

The other thing that happened this week was the staining of the bar.  It’s kind of funny how staining works.  We picked a stain that we thought would match the cabinet color.  We errored on the side of lighter and less red.  As it turned out, the stain doesn’t match the cabinets but ties in very nicely with the grape carved wood which is much better.  Remember my “It’s the Small Things.”  Well, this is one of the small things but it has made such a difference.  But let me tell you alittle about the process.  It took 3-1/2 hours to tape, fill nail holes and sand the filler and it only took an hour or so to stain.  What did we learn?  There is wood filler that takes stain, yeah!!!!.  Always, have a nail set with you when you do cabinet staining (sorry about the cut, Darolyn).  And lastly trust your judgement on stain colors.  We still have a coat of stain left to go, but here are before and afters in the meantime.  Doesn’t the blue accent tape go nicely?

Tasting Room Bar

While I’m on a roll, I want to tell you about the work in the tasting room.  We have torn out tile and wall paper, filled in doorways and created new ones, tore up the kitchen and modified the main tasting room.  But I have to say, our biggest tasting room project to date in the bar that my husband built/rebuilt.  He is one talented man and I am so lucky to have him.  A wine contact (Ron) found out we were building a tasting room and offered to sell us the bar that used to be in Mothershed’s (a local restaurant).  We remembered it had grape carvings so were definitely interested in it.  We bought it, but you can’t really call it a bar; it was in pieces, one giant jigsaw puzzle and the original design would not fit our plans.  So in a serious of weeks, RJ managed to reconstruct the bar and add a number of pieces of oak paneling and trim.  The pictures do not do it justice, but I am very proud!