Fixture Progress

Tuesday was Day 2 of the fixture installation. All of the freestanding floor fixtures were set-up and the perimeter fixtures were attached to the wall.

Tuesday's drama had to do with anchoring the fixtures. No one could decide what the depth of the fastener should be. The fixture company recommends a 3 1/2" fastener, but due to electrical conduit buried in the concrete floor the fastener cannot be that long.

At first we thought we might just check the as-built drawings or x-ray the floor so that we would be able to miss the utility chase that contains the conduit. Then we received these photos from the building contractor showing the spaghetti bowl of conduit and no utility chase. And they call themselves professionals?

Architect, structural engineer, general contractor, fixture company, fixture installer - all were asked what should be done and no one would make a recommendation that they would be held too. They all had an opinion, but no one was willing to commit that the inspector would accept it.

Wednesday morning Pam and I listened to all the opinions again, plus got a seismic engineer's opinion. Ultimately, we chose to go with the fastener that the fixture installer recommended. He's supposed to be the professional, right?

Our first Ace truck arrived today. There was no room in the store for the product because of all the fixture installation going on - so the pallets sat outside. As Pam told them when they unloaded the truck, "welcome to our life." This is pretty much how it will be for us every week when the Ace truck arrives to replenish the store.

The first visual merchandiser arrived on Tuesday. The visual merchandisers will put the product on the shelves once the fixture installation is complete. Today he helped with the fixture install and also started putting up peg hooks. The rest of the VMs arrive on Thursday.

There are bound to be a few surprises at each step, right? Well, one of the fixture surprises is the "cherry" (it's brown) laminate that was sent for one section of fixtures. Neither Pam or I remembered ordering it, but apparently we did so we let them install it. Now that it is installed, I think it looks bad, sort of like a 1960's den, so on Thursday we'll have it changed to solid white.