Bulbs!

Sylvania light bulbs arrived today! And, of course that is not the end of the story. We ordered 146 bulbs. They shipped us 90. And the Cooper Lighting God said, "Let there be half light."

The general contractor did their final cleaning today. Except for a few odd items left on the punch list, they are basically finished with the tenant improvements. Today they installed the corrugated shroud around the parking garage vent that is in our patio living area. The electrical contractor has powered up all the lights and some even have bulbs. Our sound system was installed yesterday.

And product keeps showing up. The first of six semi-trailers of merchandise from the Ace warehouse will come next Friday.

We have received over 300 responses to our job postings on Craig's List, Jobing.com and Monster.com. Tomorrow we will have an InterviewFest - 42 scheduled interviews in 6 hours - non-stop. I feel sorry for anyone after the 30th interview - they have no chance of getting a job with us.

Store fixtures arrive on Monday - the beginning of the next phase! I can barely remember when we were trying to make the fixture decision...

Three Days Left

There were lots of workers scurrying around on Tuesday. The electrical contractor doubled the size of their crew and got all of the low ceiling lights hung. Now they just have to power them up. Of course, we don't have bulbs for them yet. What a fiasco the lights have been.



Our new "inspector approved" ramp railing was installed - that cost us an unexpected $2000.



JaeJay and his helper finished up the cabling for the security camera system. They will mount the cameras and test the system after our store fixtures are installed.

The general contractor is working on our pre-walk through punch list. Tomorrow (Thursday) is the official walk-through. AT&T came and installed our phone lines. DSL should follow in a week.

More product is arriving - what part of ship after February 20 didn't they understand?

And the worst task yet - we've received 150+ resumes from unemployable people. So far, my favorites are the guy who went to Clown College and was a clown for Ringling Brothers, the guy whose resume has a picture of him holding a giant squid, and the person whose last name is Soulbefree. Oh, and of course the woman who wrote at the end of her resume: "i just want that you now that maybe im young, but i really wanna a work, im a positive person, i just want a oppurtunite to work please"

Final Week of Construction

This is the final week of construction - everything will be finished by Friday...hopefully. The electrical contractor has finished wiring the high ceiling lights and has also installed lights in the office, break room and restrooms. Real light!! They need to start hustling on the low ceiling lights now.

AT&T comes on Tuesday to install our phone lines. Pam spent the weekend setting up the our new Talkswitch phone system. She says it is hard to believe how much it can do considering how little we paid for it.

The wall graphics have been installed - here are a couple of pictures.

Our first product shipment arrived today (two weeks early) from Amerock which is a line of cabinet knobs, pulls and hinges. Fortunately our pallet jack was delivered this morning so that we were able to unload the freight. Of course the first product received had to be damaged in shipping. The box was broken and product was spilling out so we had to do a complete check-in to be sure that everything was there. Also the free display that comes with the product was damaged beyond saving, so they'll have to send a new one. Doesn't seem like a good omen.

My friend JaeJay is working away on the security camera system. Today he brought me Korean Ginseng and Ginseng Tea. He says Korean Ginseng is the best. At least, I think that is what he said.

Race visited the store again over the weekend while we did our construction pre-punch list walk-thru. He collected a box full of treasures (snipped wire, j-box slugs, screws, washers, chain, a plastic cockroach, etc). He also got up on the lift to see what it was like.

Our big project for this week is to begin the employee recruiting and hiring process. We've been putting off this dreadful task, but couldn't wait any longer since our first work day will be March 9. We put an ad on Craig's List and within seconds had 20 responses. By the end of the day we had over 50 responses. There are a lot of unemployable people out there!

My Friend JayJae

What have I gotten myself into? Somehow I ended up with responsibility for the closed circuit television security system. So, I started by working with Ace's corporate Loss Prevention Dept to design the camera layout for our store. Once that was finished, they submitted it to the two Ace preferred vendors for a quote. Well, both quotes came in at $16,000 which is way over budget. We have $15,000 budgeted which has to cover both the CCTV and the burglar alarm system. So, I got a recommendation from Mel Black, the manager of Crown Ace Hardware in Pt Loma to use the contractor that installed their system. His name is JayJae Park. He calls me Mr. Harry.

Mel told me that he does great work, but that sometimes communicating can be a challenge. He wasn't kidding. See, Jay is Asian and has a very heavy accent. I told Mel that after the first two conversations with Jay I thought I might have understood about 15% of what he said. Mel said not to worry, that Jay would understand me just fine. OK...maybe.

So, today was Jay's first day of work. He and his buddy started running cable for the 21 camera locations. See below. It's going to be an interesting week.



The electrical contractor is busy installing light fixtures. About 2/3 of the lights for the high ceiling are in, but not powered yet. The trucking company called today to tell us that the rest of the light fixtures will be delivered tomorrow (Friday). We've got one week left to get all the lights installed and powered. It will be close. Also today the electricians installed the magic Blue Box. It really IS called the Blue Box. This is the automated lighting control system and will control all the lights, signs, etc in our store. No worrying about when to turn them on or when to turn them off - the Blue Box will take care of it.



We're starting to get down to the finer points - vinyl cove has been installed at the base of some of the walls; the patio pavers are completed, and today they started to install the wall graphics. We are having four large graphics installed. First they are putting up corrugated metal which will look like a frame around the graphics. We sort of stole this idea from the Rancho Benardo store. Should be cool when finished. We passed our final plumbing inspection today too. Only electrical and structural inspections left to go.

Lights!!!

The lights for the high ceiling area FINALLY arrived today and the electrical contractor went right to work installing them. All 48 should be installed and powered by the end of the week. The low ceiling lights should arrive Monday 2/9 (fingers crossed).

The electrical contractor also powered up the exterior sign and told us it looks very good.

Race came to visit the store today and helped measure chain for the lights. He also modeled the uniform apron samples.

Logo Creation

Buy fonts from Adobe that Ace requires we use as part of the logo - $50

Buy new Adobe font from ITCFonts because Adobe font from Adobe doesn't work - $25

Credit from Adobe for the Adobe font that doesn't work - $25

Graphic artist to prepare logo for use - $40

Graphic artist to prepare logo for use on the web so that it works correctly (Harry was concerned that you wouldn't know that the above logo is not correct) - $0

Completed logo (check it off the list) - PRICELESS!

Sign Installed

The exterior signs were installed today. The big Ace Hardware looks cool. When it lights up at night, "Hardware" will light up white. The small blade sign is exactly that - SMALL! The silly city sign codes would only allow a 2' x 2' sign which looks like a postage stamp. I think we had a junior planner who would only follow the exact rules of the code instead of using some common sense and leniency. We see lots of other blade signs around downtown that are larger. Oh well - it is what it is.

The large graphics that we ordered for the walls arrived today and should be installed later this week.

We had an inspector come to the store yesterday to tell us that we need some additional railings for our stairs and ramp. That's $1800 we didn't have budgeted. The architect says the code doesn't require it and the contractor is going to talk to the inspector. But, apparently it doesn't really matter what the code is, inspectors have the leeway to require more than code at their whim.

Still no light fixtures. :-(