**Clean** dishes don't look unprofessional to me. Simple dishes like mugs and spoons hanging out in the drainer because someone couldn't be bothered to take a clean towel and finish drying them does. And you don't need to launder the towels you don't use--so choosing a DW where the dishes get full dry even when the weather is humid is a good idea. Check out the drawers--IIRC there's a learning curve to loading them. My mother always said part of the function of a dishwasher is to hide the dishes! What you were alluding to re the dish drainer. This is much easier if you can just stick stuff in where they fit and not worry about "right". Also all foreign made DWs, AFAIK, use retained heat in the dishes for drying. You might want a DW with a heated dry for just this reason. Mine will do the dish heat thing, but my flatware has acrylic handles, there are rarely heavy ceramics or metals, and glass doesn't retain much heat, so the heater is necessary. For you, even with three lunch plates and five mugs, you might need to run the DW. Same diff if it's not enough mass to get them to dry. Though if you do go with a heated dry, you do add a "right" way for thin plastics, which need to be away from the actual heater,

Re fridges, you might want width. Either a bar fridge will do you, or have one which can hold a platter or other awkward thing. Like what if you pick up a brace of ducks on your way to the office? 😁 I've always found 24" fridges annoying (and old style side by sides impossible). When I lived abroad, we had a half height fridge on a platform, that was full width. It was small, with a vestigial freezer that barely made ice trays, but stuff fit fine. My current fridge is 30", and is mostly fine, but I occasionally grumble. My 24" drawer fridge is great, though won't hold a platter or any other awkward thing, but the drawers are deep, and sometimes things get neglected in the bottoms, since it's prep and mostly holds produce. You might want to look at a 30" drawer fridge with a fridge drawer over a freezer drawer, for space savings, whereas a basic old model fridge will do you. Though for "professional" looks you might want to panel whatever fridge to match the cabinets, and panel ready costs more. The kitchenette will look bigger and sleeker if you panel.

If your DD is happy in the cozy basement, no arguments here. The friend whom you like to bounce ideas with is a great idea if he's really into moving in. I know you're used to working all alone, but having life and activity on the sevond floor should help agaist the draw of life in the café, besides all the good you mentioned. Re the B terminal, I don't kniw enough about how your work functions to understand the specifics, but from what you said, if you can both get what you need out of the same terminal without tripping on each other or having to do more than a login to change profiles or whatever, it wouldn't make sense not to share. However! I'm assuming that's an addition that's more worth it as a shared expense, not a replacement for both of your preferred data sources. Because unless you both think B is significantly better than the ones you're using and a happy, if pricey, upgrade, not a compromise, it's going to affect your relationship as well as your work.

Re cooking appliances, it's a kitchen. It's going to be a pain having to open a cupboard to zap a biscuit. I get that you want a sleeker look, but I suggest slide away doors that can cover them, but be out of the way most of the time, and matte finishes on the actual ovens so they retire more when they are seen,

In our office--I don't know why but "creative" people were involved--there's a full kitchen with a big range in an L in the main room, with the fancy corporate looking conference table, complete with Herman Miller chairs and conference phone, in the center looking so much like a dining table, in a former light industrial space with joists and conduits showing. It is not homey or comfy, nor professional looking, nor chic. It's a conference area in a kitchen in a factory, including, on the other side of the room, a couple of desks, gray metal filing cabinets and a big plotter bringing the "office". I don't suggest it. Your plan, with the walls and doors makes sense and looks both functional and professional, no matter how kitcheny the kitchen is,

It doesn't show in the plan, but I hope your expanded bathroom will have a shower. The shower at our office seemed weird to me at first, though the design makes it kind of disappear from sight, but it has proven very valuable, including when the i***t who lives in the hills has had to evacuate and brought his family to the office for refuge.

That office "kitchen" sounds peculiar. I'm sure some architect thought it would look cool. Many architects are bad at kitchens.

At the risk of revealing how much I overthink things, here are some longer-term considerations rattling around in my head. I figure there is a decent chance the second floor will someday be returned to residential e.g. a small two-bedroom or one-bedroom + home office. Say, after I retire and give the building to DD.

All things being equal, then, I'd like the floor set up for easy repurposing. That is another reason to include a dishwasher, a not-too-tiny refrigerator, and a cabinet that can later accomodate a future not-too-tiny electric range. Sure, the kitchenette can simply be gutted and redone too, but I might not be up for DIY'ing by then.

I want a shower in the bathroom for sure. Maybe something like the drawing below.

I love the way these old houses are so flexible, can serve so many different uses over the decades and centuries.

P.S. I am a big believer in letting one's subconscious decide. I figure, you think, overthink, and think some more without making any effort to decide, then when something "feels right" you stop thinking and flip into doing and improvising.

That sounds good to me. Thinking until your thinker gets all stuffed up and let it drop the answer into the slot. :)

Our office kitchen is very odd. :) As a functionally planned kitchen, it's a pretty cookie cutter L, and likely not bad. (The most I've done is run some water.) The whole buildout is weird, though the offices are just boxes, so not bad. :)

I get it about the future functional living space. In that case, designing the kitchenette to be a functional kitchen is a good idea. They keep changing the spaces required for ranges, so it would help to have a full 32" to fit a nominally 30" range. Also, if you're designing for that future, a 30" freezer bottom fridge makes the most sense. But do panel it. Will you be able to put in ducting for a vent hood? That would be a good idea to do while stuff is demo'd.

Are the interior walls all partitions, or are some load bearing?

I think the walls going vertically (up-down) may be load bearing, especially the one at the bottom of the plan. But I don’t need to disturb them. I’m filling in openings more than making new ones.

The Bloomberg terminal would be a nice to have to try out for a year and decide if the cost is worth it. But T____ and I may decide other research and data sources are a better supplement to what we currently use. Or maybe I’ll sit down and re-investigate some of the new AI agentic tools; last time I tried, they were more a source of risk and error than useful.

The danger, of course, is confusing more data for better decisions.

Current AI is like a toddler whose answers are meant to please you rather than communicate fact. The AIs have no discernment and no way to distinguish truth from fiction--some humans have this affliction too, of course, but there are still plenty who can tell. Recently there was an ad in a game I was playing which was obviously a scam just by its format (the keep watching and we'll let you in on our secret formula variety) but the narration was being done by a famous TV personality. The words matched the lips very well, and there were none of the telltales that you see in the stuff more available to average users over the last few years. But I didn't believe it, and kept watching for incontrovertible clues that it was AI generated, besides how much specialists working for the movies get paid seeming out of reach for a snake oil racket. Finally, Famous Guy spoke some words as they were written in a way no moderately literate American would ever ever do. Bingo. Really sophisticated simulation, but AI still doesn't pass the Turing test. By the time you authenticate its data, I'm guessing you could acquire the info yourselves. :)

I’ve started and deleted a reply about AI, three or four times, such is my internal conflict on the topic.

I admire it, am disgusted by it, it is fascinating, it is frightening, I feel righteous, I feel disinterested, the multiple kinds of technology all lumped together in the term make things more confusing, and the associations of arrogance, avarice, and amorality all make me angry.

There. That’s the most coherent I can be on the topic in fewer than 3,000 words.

Good job! When used as a search engine it can be very useful, especially in summarizing its findings, but I had a letter from a young lady who has an American parent, but has mostly learned English in school. The cadence and structure was totally AI, and the spelling and grammar were perfect. A young man who just finished his master's, in the same country, who lived in California until he was 12, and whose mother is a teacher, had foreigner errors in a much shorter e-mail I called the girl on it and she denied it was AI. Perhaps, but if so, she's been learning her English writing from AI. Her American parent's English is bad at this point. I correct typos in my last post just now. I think there may be some stealth auto-correct besides the one I turned off. EEEK!

I spend more time than I should on Reddit, and it is interesting to look for the AI posts. The cadence, formatting, and tone are quite distinctive. Of course Reddit now makes money as AI training fodder, so that must be what they call recursive poop recyclage.

I suppose that, like atomic bombs and asset-backed securitization, artificial intelligence is one of those things that shouldn’t have been, but was inevitably bound to be, invented.

A good deal of my time is spent thinking about AI, specifically how to make money betting on, or not on, the industry. I confess to not having all that much interest in using AI myself.

Quite aside from questions of reliability and relevance, having a machine do work for me takes away the value of having done the work. Reading a transcript, pulling numbers from a filing, scanning a slide deck, is more than simply data retrieval. You notice things you hadn’t thought of, ask questions you didn’t have, devise and dismiss hypotheses, explore rabbit holes. The subconscious is being fed. It doesn’t like skinny summaries. It wants the full-fat raw material.

One practical issue is that I don’t want to let the agentic sort of AI into my PC, files, or accounts. But I bought a new workstation last year, that I haven’t had time to set up. While it is still a blank slate, that seems the perfect testbed.

Bravo! Beautifully said.

The next scary part is they're now treating AI caused psychosis and dependency, and finding that kids who use it for school are actually stunting their brain development. Yikes!

Imagine that, not doing one’s own thinking or interacting with other humans has consequences.

The young people I know - DD and DS’ friend groups - have low regard for AI-generated work, which they seem to be able to detect easily. Their attitude toward AI - the popular LLM variety, that is - ranges from disinterest to despicable. There is a movement away from digital and technological and virtual, back to analog and organic and physical.

I saw a chart recently showing that downloads of Sora (OpenAI’s consumer app for AI video generation) is rolling over fast.

Speaking of psychosis and dependency, about two years ago I spent some time thinking about the legal structure for a perpetual entity controlled by an AI. My feeling was that billionaires would train AI on themselves and all their writing, speaking, and actions, in search of the perfect assistant, right-hand man, confidant, alter ego, and that as these men age they would come to see their digital simulacra as their eternal selves. Kind of like I’ll look at a photo of myself from thirty years ago; imagine if I could have my younger self constantly at my side, doing more and more of what I do, never aging or forgetting, eventually to surpass me at being me. I might want to to live forever, and now I can. But how to eternally keep wealth and power and control in my digital form? A corporation has an infinite life, but legally how can a corporation be owned and controlled by an AI?

I thought of some structures, but really what we “need” is legal recognition of digital persons with the same property and personal rights as biological persons.

There’s no reason Wintermute should be owned by the Tessier-Ashpool orbital dynasty. It can BE the dynasty.

Yikes!

Time for an update on matters sundry.

Work has resumed on the triplex. My electrician is wiring the second floor and I’m trying to stay ahead of her with demo and wall building. In addition to reforming the kitchen to a kitchenette with a separate entrance, I’m closing up the big opening between “living room” and “dining room” so the former can be a conference room and the latter a private office. Since this will cut the office off from the conference room’s southern exposure and sunlight, the new wall will have a transom window.

In one of the walls I cut open, hidden behind the lath, my electrician found a commenorative plaque from the 1909 Seattle ”Alaska-Yukon Exposition”, which was a big thing, 4MM attendees and some of the buildings remain part of the University of Washington campus today. That plaque will go into a display on the history of the house. K_____ was stoked and wants to cut open more walls to look for goodies. I’ve okay’ed any and all wall opening she wants to do; there is so much drywalling needed already, what’s another couple rooms.

Hmm. The house was built in 1907. How this plaque got behind the walls is a mystery.

Meanwhile, at home we are exploring the magic of CBD. I already use a CBD lotion for topical pain (skiing, demo, etc) and through A/B testing have determined it as effective as a pharmaceutical lidocaine patch. I have also found CBD tincture a reasonable sleep aid. We now have some CBD bath bombs for SWMBO to try out and I gave K____ some CBD lotion because, surprise, electricians get sore too.

It also turns out that CBD tincture, either in food or more efficaciously rubbed in ears, is good for calming nervous cats.

Our young black cat was so excited when the kittens arrived. She declared herself their mommy and set about grooming and mothering them, and the kittens followed her everywhere while occasionally chafing at her overprotective moments.

Then something changed. DD thinks Calcifer, who was only 11 months when she acquired her kitten babies, suddenly realized “OMG I’m a teen mother and these brats won’t leave me alone but I just want to prowl the neighborhood, hang with gang cats, and smoke cigarettes”. So now Cal mostly stays outside, coming in only to eat, hiss at the kittens, and snarl at humans to let her out. When no-one lets her out, Cal disappears into the basement to gamble and smoke crack.

It has been an upsetting personality change, for us and the orphaned kittens, to see sweet affectionate Cal turn into a surly foul-mouthed gangcat. Well, DD discovered that some CBD rubbed in her ears turns Cal back into a sweet kitty, for awhile. We have some kitty Prozac ordered but for now, its cannabinoids to the rescue. So dosed, Cal slept calmly on my bed last night which she hasn’t done for months.

Sigh, I guess this is what it’s come to. My stoner and pyschedelic youth is long over, now I smack my gums excitedly about CBD pain lotion and bath bombs. What would the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers think?

Speaking of the kittens, they are already the size of adult cats and still growing. Their paws are still comically large for their bodies, and the ragdoll in them suggests they may get larger indeed. I have been showing photographs of gigantic ragdoll cats to SWMBO, who is not good at detecting AI images and is now convinced the kittens will grow to the size of German Shepherds. She has been wondering if they will be safe to be around, and as a thoughtful spouse I’ve been telling her it will be like living with savage panthers and we’ll need to remove the couch for a kiddie pool-sized litterbox. She may be catching on, but this little fiction is fun while it lasts.

I had better be nicer to SWMBO, because her great grandparents were from Quebec. Under the new Canadian law, this means - I think - that she can get her Canadian citizenship and so, perhaps, can DD and DS. We are looking to hire a genealogical researcher pronto.

I, however, have no such option. I suppose I could pursue Chinese citizenship, which for some reason doesn’t appeal in the slightest. Someday I may be toiling away here in Oregon, sending remittances to SWMBO gaily living her best life in Montreal or Vancouver or wherever strikes her fancy. Sigh again. Will need more CBD.

The electrical work is moving along nicely. My electrician has removed all the knob and tube and is rewiring almost the entire building. We have a system going; I open a wall and decorate it with sheets of paper marked with volts, amps, double or quad outlet and purpose, and magically cable, boxes, and outlets appear. In the kitchen ceiling, shown here, she is installing outlets so that lights can be moved or changed as needs dictate.

The rooms that are not being fully gutted are having baseboards removed and walls cut open, so that outlets can be added and wired with a minimum of effort and more logic than currently exists. Here in the living room, the existing outlets come from the basement lighting circuit . . .

The second floor kitchenette wall is framed and bathroom partly gutted, and will be wired next.

After the bulk of the electrical is done, I’ll remove the bathroom and kitchen floors and get the plumber in. All the plumbing for the first and second floors will then be exposed. We are going to remove all the accreted spaghetti of copper, iron, galvanized, and Pex, leaving only the recently upgraded supply line from the meter and the cast iron main drain stack, and replumb the house, save only the . basement.

I have started building dimensional mockups of the coffee bar equipment, which we’ll use to lay out and build the bar. Here you see a ”ice machine” and a ”refrigerator”. That needs to be at least framed up, so the associated electrical and plumbing can be roughed in.

Various issues have arisen with the city, but that’s for another day.

Issues always arise from the city. I predict it'll be fine in the long run. Often they want to test your mettle and make sure you'll just through hoops when asked.

Congratulations on the progress. I was just thinking it was time for an update, so thanks for that. It's very nice seeing the structure look like the progress you've achieved.

Tell your daughter she might be surprised what she finds behind the other walls.

That’s funny!

As an example of "city issues".

Of the 42 reviewer comments we are wading through, one if the Plumbing Division reviewer's comment requiring submission of a "plumbing plan." So my architect emails me, please provide a plumbing plan. Wait a minute, think I - our permit package included a form titled "plumbing plan review" on which we checked the box "no plumbing plan required". I spent half a day studying the city and state plumbing code and laws. In 2019, the state published an administrative rule expressly prohibiting local jurisdictions from requiring plumbing plans except for defined "complex projects" which a coffee shop, indeed even a full-blown restaurant, is not (no medical gases, wastewater pretreatment, etc.) And that non-complexity is what our form indicated. So I call my architect and ask what's up. He says well, the review will be faster if we just supply a plumbing plan. NO, I say, all the sinks and other plumbing fixtures are indicated on the drawings we submitted, and I am not voluntarily hiring a plumbing engineer to create schematics with riser heights and part specifications. Go back to the reviewer, or his supervisor if need be, and find out why he thinks he can require a plumbing plan. And so we wait.

I did submit the FOG (fats, oils, and grease) plan as required. That one is pretty simple. Everything in the kitchen and coffee bar will drain to a 50 gph hydromechanical grease interceptor, probably located in the basement bathroom. The tub/shower down there will be removed, which is fine as we don't need it.

Yeah. That sounds like the local government version of what the military calls SNAFU to FUBAR. Perfedtly normal. Good for you for sticking to your guns on behalf of the citizenry, though I daresay the architect was right about the time and effort involved. Your lucky DD has something that most small business entrepreneurs do not: Loving parents who can afford to house and feed her in the meantime. :) I always hear from the trades how lucky we are to not be in a neighboring town because of that kind of thing, though which town has changed from one to another over the decades...

We have plenty of other “issues” to work through and/or appeal, so no one issue is going to hold things up any more than the whole.

From where we are, the actual work to put the cafe together might take two months. But it’s not going to be that simple!

I have been amusing myself hot-gluing together sticks of scrap to the dimensions of equipment, so we can do the final mockup before starting to build the coffee bar. From left to right, that is a 36” deli case, 20” ice machine, 24” refrigerator, 28” espresso machine.

Wow I can see it’s all coming together now JL, how exciting for you all. It seems like a real nice character filled building that ”should” attract a following and a constant supply of newbies with some publicity that no doubt will happen.

Thank you neely. I think it will be a good business for DD, a good office for me, and the process is very interesting.

And the ski season has been a disaster anyway, I was to go up tomorrow but it’ll be *raining* and mid-forties . . . absent a major turn in the weather, the season is toast. So, nothing to do but work on the project.

I’m learning about commercial real estate as well. I’ve long thought neighborhood CRE in Portland is way overpriced, typically barely able to deliver a cap rate of 4% when interest rates are 7%. I think that even more now! The only reason this project makes any slight maybe sense is a lot of DIY, owner-occupancy, and the intent and capacity to hold indefinitely. I’m not optimistic on CRE prices here . . .

I have been coming up with ideas about optimizing time/motion for a coffee bar, which all get shot down by DD and the baristas I ask. Sigh.

For example, baristas are constantly bending over, opening the refrigerator, taking out a gallon of milk, pouring 6 oz into the pitcher, opening the door, replacing the milk, then doing it again 45 seconds later, over and over and over for hours on end. How can this be efficient?

I proposed we get a milk-rated refrigerated countertop beverage dispenser so the motion is simply put pitcher under tap with no bending or lifting. https://www.webstaurantstore.com/crathco-d15-3-single-5-gallon-bowl-stainless-steel-refrigerated-beverage-dispenser/385D153.html

Shot down, aggressively.

Well, I will get one for my office and when DD and her barista see it, they may change their minds.

Diabolical!

I've never done coffee service. Do they consider the bending part of their exercise ritual? What I do know is that opening the fridge as often as you describe can't be good for the fridge, and will certainly raise the temperature. I worry, though, about the punch dispenser. It's been decades since I've refilled a milk dispenser, and the tech must have advanced, but generally, the milk came in sacks which went in the machine and saved a lot on packaging, besides holding the milk at the optimum temperature. I don't know if this is an option, but if 6 oz. is happening most of the time, one that measures the flow would save a lot of labor as well. I don't think the device you linked would do a good job for milk. Do check out proper milk dispensers and maybe they won't laugh you off. OTOH, I don't know if seeing the milk jug makes customers happy. I think they might not want to see sacks of milk, so being able to reload a dispenser out of sight might be necessary...

Even if jugs of milk are preferred, coverable pitches, prefilled on a tray could be very helpful.

I have never seen a barista leave the milk jug out on the counter. They always put it back right away. Maybe the world needs an insulated milk jug.

I used to refill the milk dispensers at the college dorm dining hall. Remember the plastic “milk crates”?

Yup! I had a business back when which depended on decommissioned and/or consumer end milk crates But they have better, smaller, attractive milk dispensers than what you had in the dorms. I'm not a coffee drinker nor coffee bar habitué--apparently the exposure I've had as the water drinking companion is inadequate. I'm frankly shocked that hauling a gallon plastic jug of milk in and out of an undercounter fridge (which frankly sounds like an OSHA trap to me) is the norm! -- Never mind! I did some deep research. The lovely ones are a lot smaller than I'd thought--not useful. And I found some details about the bigger ones which seem just as bad or worse as the under counter fridge in terms of potential stress injuries. Grr. I beg you pardon. I spoke too soon. But setting up a tray of a couple dozen at a time of pre-measured covered pitchers in the fridge still seems a possibly good idea once a rush develops (i.e., making sure there's a shelf for such a thing ahead of need could be useful).

Not much progress. I did get part of the temporary coffee bar built. We will use the temporary bar for a year then have a permanent bar constructed, with the lessons learned.

The rewiring is mostly completed. Electrician is waiting on me to finish some things. Last weekend, she and I, and my friend Mike in the orange gloves, took a break and pulled the transmission from her BMW. This is a crazy painted “art car” she won in a raffle. It looks amazing but needs a new transmission and starter.

Pulling the starter was harder than pulling the transmission. These BMW engineers are demented. Normally to access the starter you have to remove the entire intake manifold with all the wiring, fuel lines, etc. I was able to get it out by removing "only" the throttle body, attached ducting, some fuel lines, and the oil dipstick tube - then wedge hands down there and blind-grope for bolts. Sheesh. A starter in a normal car takes ten minutes.

I’m waiting at the building for a plumber and directional driller who are putting in a new larger water line. My architect thought the existing 3/4” line was sufficient but the plumber says it will not satisfy the plumbing inspector. After this is done, the plumber will start replumbing the building. The existing plumbing is old and random . . . and almost all exposed now, so whatever we can access is going to be replaced. The basement bath/shower also has to go as the grease interceptor needs to go there.

This weekend I will start taking off the ceiling and walls in the finished basement. The city is making me do seismic bolting and reinforce the joists for the cafe floor. The latter will involve sistering new 2x8 joists. I am exploring the possibility of having a friend waterjet some 12’ x 7.5” steel plate to be bolted to the existing joists, which may be easier than muscling wood into place.

We are going to take the opportunity to remove some unneeded basement soffits for abandoned ducting, and rewire the basement. We have to take off part of the ceiling anyway to replumb.

Next week I have a meeting with the architect to go over all the appeals we will be filling. The city is refusing to “grandfather” any life safety related features of the existing building so they want a bunch of changes to the stairwell.

I’m expecting a surveyor’s report locating the exact property lines. Hopefully we will find the setback is enough that I will not have to add fire rated material to the exterior wall on the north.

P.S. Dang these directional drillers are great. Took him an hour, $1200, drilled a 30' hole right on the money, minimal hand digging.

Thanks for the giggles about your definition of talking a break. :)

Congrats on the drilled hole!

Omg, I lost track of this thread ages ago and just noticed it now has 589 comments, so figured something must be happening. Wow, I guess so! I haven’t yet read backwards or forwards far enough to learn exactly what happened that precipitated this new venture, but congratulations! I wish you all the best of luck! I will try to keep up! :)

This thread has everything from cooking to weight loss techniques, and building codes requirements to pulling the starter on a BMW. Lol!

Well, speaking of weight loss techniques, I am in my first week of Zepbound which is Lilly’s GLP-1 drug. My doctor says my troublesome blood values will normalize, but I’ll also lose muscle mass unless I lift. I’m in a fairly physically active phase with the project, and when it’s done I’ll have a gym in the attic!

I’ve owned Lilly stock for some years, and figure that getting some experience with their main product may be a bonus.

I'm on week ?? I can't remember of Zepbound and I LOVE this stuff! Mostly, besides the lessening of appetite, the loss of interest in drinking wine (of which I was quite a fan) and losing my interest in not-so-good for me foods (white carbs, sugar), I hadn't realized its anti-inflammatory benefits. My arthritis pain is much diminished and swelling in my ankles and feet has all but disappeared. I hope you have a positive outcome. Drink your water (lots) focus on protein and get lots of fiber to stave off constipation (it's real!)

Took of a bit of the basement ceiling to see if this is something I want to do myself w/ DS and DD helping. Answer: yes, it’s messy but easy.

Cut out a bit of the top 12” of basement wall, to see how access is for the seismic bolting and replacing the internal water line with 1”. Not bad.

I need to talk to the engineer, get him to agree the sister joists need not go all the way to the bearing wall/beam. Structurally I’m pretty sure that’s right as the ends of the old joists are not going to crush, it is their stiffness mid span that we need to increase. With the interior walls in place, it will (EDIT: not ) be hard if not impossible to get the new joist ends all the way back there.

EDIT; no it won’t be (hard). I measured more carefully, there is room to get full length joists in there. I’ll start doing this either in the evening next week or next weekend.

Olychick, that is good to hear. Thank you.

Well, the joist project is not going to be that quick.

It’s not the work itself. The engineer has kindly proposed a design that will be quite easy for me to do. He says I can install blocking between the existing joists and sitting on the mudsill, with framing angles, then use joist hangers on the blocking to mount the joists. This is significant because I won’t have to push and hammer the new joists into the space between mudsill and subfloor, and the new joists can be a few inches shorter.

It is that the engineer needs to draw out the plans, then my architect needs to submit to the city, the city engineer needs to approve, and only then can I do the work. I don’t dare start without the city’s approval of the exact design, because if they object to something - the fasteners used, the hangers used, the position of the blocking - I could have to pull it out and do it all over again.

So basically the joists won’t be done for a month at best.

In the meantime, I am working on the seismic retrofit, since that is a standardized design (“prescriptive”). I’ve cut out the upper walls to expose the foundation and mudsill, started installing framing angles to connect rim joist to mudsill, and will next start installing earthquake brackets to bolt mudsill to foundation.

Upper walls cut out.

Simpson A34 framing angle installed. This prevents the rim joist from coming off the mudsill. The brackets look a little wee so I’m putting them in every joist bay.

Test fitting a Simpson URFP bracket, which prevents the mudsill from sliding off the foundation. Here I’m checking if I have access to fasten these with the 2x4 interior wall in the way. Answer: yes. Good, because otherwise I’d be removing those interior walls just to rebuild them later. These brackets go at the corners then every 48”. All this will be familiar to anyone who’s had an older house seismically retrofitted.

I can keep busy in the basement for a while, while waiting for the city’s approval of the joist design. I will strip all the wiring and bracing from the ceiling, since they have to go for the new joists to be installed. My electrician says I can simply turn off breakers and cut out all the wiring, she will completely rewire it anyway.

There are also soffits in the basement ceiling for ducting that is no longer used, and a superfluous closet that was mostly built to conceal a great big duct from a furnace that has been removed. I’m going to remove all of that, to reclaim some space.

Yes, the basement that DD painted and has been using is getting totally torn up and will be that way for awhile. She is sad but there’s no choice, and it will end up nicer.

We got the transmission and starter back into my electrician’s BMW today. In the evenings, this week, we’ll hopefully finish the work and have her driving her crazy art-painted car again.

This is motivating me to work on my own BMW. I have a 1986 535i (E28 model) with a tired stock suspension, and a complete racing suspension from a E28 racecar project that someone abandoned in disgust when his mechanic disappeared with his race engine. The poor guy had to recoup what he could, and sold the entire suspension, built with every racing modification, reinforcement, and conponents used in club racing these E28 but never driven even once, to me for $3,500. I simply have to pull my stock suspension off and bolt the new kit on.

Ah well. I have a long queue of projects, and maybe I’ll get to the E28 over the winter.

Is there NOTHING you can't do? It's so impressive to read about it all!

It’s midnight, I just got home from my shop, but K___’s BMW is on the road again! My landlord at the shop welded up a hole in her exhaust, we got the exhaust mounted, new filter and fluid in the transmission, then had to run out for a new battery, finally the Ghost Car lives!

This is a 1995 BMW 325i with a custom “cartoon” paint job by an artist who is known for these things. Joshua Vides - here’s an article about him. https://mymodernmet.com/joshua-vides-comic-book-cars/

K____ follows this artist, and won his car in a raffle, so it cost her all of $400. The car itself is, well, it’s an old BMW that was suitable for an art project, so it has some issues, but we’ve sorted the biggest things. It is a brash, fun, zippy Ghostmobile. Later this year it will get a bit of suspension TLC (bushings, tie rod ends) and a couple light bulbs need replacing, it’s almost “there”.

Making four-doors cool again.

Now that it runs...is it street safe / legal?

Oh yes, legal, safe, registered. It is just a stock 325i with a custom paint job.

A quick update.

For the Project, I am finished with the seismic retrofitting and the plumbers are making good progress.

Plumbers really take over a building. There are rolls of Pex, obstacle courses of pipe, and boxes of fittings all over the place. I’m busy opening walls, framing out fixture locations, ordering said fixtures, while E_____ and his two helpers have been cutting out all the old pipes and installing the new waste and vent lines.

It turns out that fitting a commercial building’s plumbing into a 1907 house is difficult. There are so many fixtures in the kitchen and coffee bar area - five sinks, five “floor sinks”, at least one floor drain - that all have to drain to a grease interceptor and then to the main stack. The line diameter and venting requirements are greater than for residential.

A 3” or 4” line can’t go through a 2x8 joist, so the waste lines in the floor of the cafe have to run between the joists to the basement garage area where headroom isn’t an issue (much) and the lines can turn to reach the interceptor in the garage. The floor sinks we bought were too deep, people in the basement would have been banging their heads on the P-traps. I had to rush order special shallow stainless steel floor sinks, $1,700 just for those, and the work is being held up awaiting delivery.

The waste lines in the floor of the office (second floor) have to be dropped under the joists, so I will have to frame out a dropped ceiling in the kitchen, which fortunately has more than enough headroom.

The previous plumbers didn’t care about compromising joist integrity. Here is DS inspecting one joist that was hollowed to almost nothing, for the original upstairs toilet and tub drain lines.

We don’t want an inspector to see that, of course, but we also don’t want to call attention to it with an obvious repair. Fortunately, there was a 12’ length of old 2x8 in the hoarder’s stash under the porch, which we ripped down and DS used to sandwich that transparent joist. It looks like it’s been there forever, doesn’t it? Especially after I go up and dab a little brown paint on any shiny nail heads . . .

Old houses around here were often built with skinnier-than-current studs, like 2x3. Commercial plumbing doesn’t allow air admittance valves, all fixtures must be vented all the way to the roof, and the vents are 2” lines, so how do you run a 2” line through a 3” stud? You frame out a second, non-bearing wall with normal 2x4s, and make big holes in that.

The cafe bathroom floor always felt “soft” in spots. Removing the old tile exposed some big ragged holes in not only the original T&G floorboards, but the subfloor planking as well. Uh oh. I spent a while in the crawlspace below, adding blocking below all the holes, then cutting and fitting salvaged floorboards to continue the missing subfloor planks. Tomorrow I’ll finish that and screw down cement board, and the plumbers can resume work on that bathroom. The same will have to be done in the kitchen - remove original wood floor, screw down cement board, shimming to direct water to the floor drains.

Meanwhile, DS was tearing out the basement bathroom vanity, because we’ve decided we will leave no original piping. I only have one chance to rebuild this place, might as well do everything. The bit of cast iron main stack you see in the corner is the only original pipe that will remain. Yes, this place is pretty gutted. Scope creep, indeed.

I know, too much plumbing. We’ll be done with it by the end of this month, and can then move on to sistering the first floor joists. Right now there is just too much plumbing clutter everywhere, and I’ll still waiting for the city’s approval of the structural engineer’s drawings anyway.

I'm thrilled with your plumbing decision! You may feel harried now, but you'll be so glad you did it once it's done. And great that you're finding all the structural faults while you have the walls open, etc. Your right sized sister will is most excellent. Great work!

I am also learning that building materials have come a long way since I last tiled a floor or shower - 1990 ish? In the bathroom, I’ll use this high tech stuff called Schulter-Ditra membrane which both waterproofs and uncouples. Since there will be a floor drain in the bathroom, that floor should be actually waterproof. https://www.schluter.com/schluter-us/en_US/Membranes/Uncoupling-(DITRA)/Schluter%AE-DITRA-&-DITRA-XL/p/product?productCode=DITRA-XL%2F175

My electrician, she of the crazy clown car, will return after the plumbers leave and the basement joists are sistered, to move her boxes and resume her work. The basement now needs to be completely rewired, since I’ve cut all the old wiring out of the ceiling.

I need to start looking for a cement contractor to pave the parking area, but that’s been held up awaiting the city’s decision on whether my driveway has to be narrowed. And figure out whether to hire a carpenter to do the pointless but city-required work on the porch (reinforcing to support 100 lb/sf live load, making the porch floor level to meet ADA standards of less than 1:48 slope) or add that to my list. Etc etc.

That all sounds worthwhile. Re the porch, if it sounds like a task which will in some way please you to do, or if you think you can do it better, go for it. Otherwise, my instinct is to hire a good pro who stands by the work, and let someone with experience and earned skill do the pernickety stuff. I'm confident you can do the job, but IME, tradesmen know tricks and facts that make that kind of job easier. After all the collapses from packed parties straining supports beyond credulity, I think it's an excellent idea that the city requires the underpinings to survive such a situation. Is it too soon to have a timeline?

We are aiming at end of July but I’ve no confidence in that date. Sometime this summer is the strong hope. But if we open in the freezing drenching dead of winter, and limp along with zero staff and just family working until next spring, then so be it.

I can definitely do the carpentry on the porch and am looking forward to it. I love my new nail gun and want to use it!

I’m more likely to hire drywallers - heck, make that “have decided to”. I did some drywall on my first house. It wasn’t a fun time. The pros are like magicians.

I did a lot of tiling then too, and enjoyed that much more. There will be lots of tilework to do here.

We are going to buy old vintage interesting bookshelves as I won’t have time to make them all, and old & vintage will fit the vibe better.

DD will organize a painting party of her friends. She will learn to miter and install trim soon.

Tonight I decided the old subfloor in the cafe bathroom had to go, and cut it all out. I’m wearing my respirator. Working here gave me a persistent cough, to the point that SWMBO wanted me to see the doctor; I started wearing a respirator for anything remotely dusty or dirty, and the cough is gone.

I’ll shim the joists to level with a 2% slope to the center floor drain, then screw down 3/4“ plywood as the new subfloor. It will be a solid base for membrane and tile, which the old subfloor was not.

Boy, plumbing has so many constraints. The mop sink is directly above where the exhaust duct for the gas water heater enters the chimney. Heat sources and plastic pipe must be 18” apart. We could break another opening in the chimney and brick up the existing one. We could plumb the mop sink with cast iron waste lines and metal supply lines. Or . . . we could install a gas-fired on-demand tankless water heater which can vent differently.

The plumber says the water heater can’t provide enough hot water for the cafe anyway; I disagree, but like the idea of tankless, so that’s what we’ll do.

Tankless is a good choice for energy usage, and will never run out. And saves space, and with luck won't have a catastrophic leak, which tanks are notorious for, and tankless last longer. Also, there is the whole water temperature thing. Unless you have a recirculating pump and constant firing with a tank, you could easily have times with the water temperature below requirement. With on-demand,, you set your required temperature (depending on distance, perhaps accounting for some heatloss before the sink, though insulation can help that), and that's what you get,

Bravo to you for enjoying tiling! That's something few DIYers want to do. Small tip: Give yourself extra curing time. Oh, wait. I'm thinking trad. You're likely using thinset or other polymers. Nevermind. But still bravo for undertaking it. Glad you're looking forward to doing the fiddly carpentry. There's a fair bit of engineering involved, but I know you can do it. It just helps if you're having fun.

Double bravo for planning on your daughter learning finishing work.

Triple brava to Ms. MBO for her part in getting you into a mask. I have a similar one for working with dyes and other powders. My father was a wood turner (hobby) and developed a lung disease from it. He ended up adding a ventilation system to his atelier, pumping fresh air into a full hood. The lathe doesn't move, so that worked. Much better to keep wearing your mask and preventing nasties.

This all sounds very promising. Love the vintage bookshelves! Do protect yourself in the moving of those, too. They can be exceedingly heavy. Good thing you've been improving the joists, etc, Even though your area isn't earthquake prone, you're going to need to strap them to the walls. A small child can bring down a bookcase. And it's something you should be able to do easily.

Your timeline sounds reasonable. And for all the fewer walkers post equinox, if it should come to that, the ones there are will be wanting hot refreshments, right? Thank-you for sharing all this! It's such an interesting project, and I hope your DearD does very well with it.

It’s funny, but after living in the Land of Earthquakes for so long, and experiencing two pretty sizable ones (Whittier and Northridge, the latter not far from my house at the time), we have moved up to where people live in dread of the mythical all-killing earthquake to come.

The Pacific Northwest has the “Cascadia Subduction Zone”, about 100 miles offshore and several hundred miles long from Southern Oregon to the northern end of Vancouver Island, where various Pacific plates are diving under the North American plate. This is why, I think, we have a string of volcanos from Southern Oregon all the way up to the Canadian border and maybe further. Mt St Helens is the most famous of these. Mt Hood, where I ski, is another volcano. Mt Tabor, a few miles to the east of my house, is a small, extinct volcano. And so on.

Anyway, the CSZ moves every few or several hundred years, per the geologic record and old Japanese tsunami records. When it moves, it is believed to produce a magnitude 9 earthquake and tremendous tsunamis, all up and down the PNW coast. I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time studying USGS earthquake, soil, and tsunami forecast maps, and it is pretty clear that substantially all the towns on the Oregon coast will be wiped out, save a few high spots. This is why there are earthquake sirens and ”Tsunami Evacuation Route” all over the Oregon and Southwest Washington coast.

Some of those evacuation signs are clearly just to give you something to do before you die. We spent a weekend in Long Beach, WA (where Ocean Spray cranberries come from!). It is a long spit, you’re at least 30 minutes drive from the “mainland”, and the entire thing is darn near sea level. I had trouble sleeping the whole weekend: one tsunami, and the “ jyl bloodline “ is gone. There were Tsunami Evacuation Route signs. We drove up one such route and reached “high ground” - like, 50 feet above sea level. I guess you at least have a good view of the hundred foot wave that will end your life.

In Washington, the tsunami will ricochet around Puget Sound, inundating some towns and parts of cities. I once spent some time figuring where in Port Townsend we could, and could not, consider buying a retirement house.

As for the shaking, the 9.0 at 100 miles offshore is expected to be about a 6.5 to 7.0 in Portland, a hundred miles inshore. So sayeth the USGS. As we know from other large earthquakes, including the ones I experienced, the effect on structures will vary depending on soil and structure. My house is standard wood frame construction, concrete foundation walls, no cripple studs, full seismic retrofit. So we have a pretty good chance of getting through with some, but repairable, damage. Hopefully the same will happen at the cafe-bookstore, just three blocks away.

Of course, all but one of the bridges over the Willamette River are expected to fail, leaving Portland split in half, such that those of us on the east side will be unable to attend the ballet and symphony on the westside and the symphony-goers on the westside will be unable to come slumming the dive bars and bookstores on the eastside. The I-5 bridge over the Columbia River will likely fail so that interstate commerce will have to make the long detour east to some far inland crossing and our potato chips will thus cost significantly more.

Seriously, it will be a colossal disaster. The PNW is not built for earthquakes, because the last CSZ rupture was in January 1700, and it is “due” for the next one, meaning it might or might not happen in my lifetime or my kids’ lifetimes . . . no, we’re not doing much “prepping”, just the usual ridiculous quantity of pantry foods, wine, energy drinks, and toilet paper befitting a family with a Costco membership and a full basement, and I do mean “full”.

When Covid hit, and no one wanted to go to the grocery store, where there was no toilet paper anyway - we were FINE, didn’t need to go shopping for a month and could have done longer, occasionally SWMBO would regally flick a roll of Charmin at an abjectly grateful neighbor with no Costco card. I of course was going to work every day in my utterly deserted office building where, I learned, there was no toilet paper shortage at all, the commercial janitorial supply houses were full of the stuff that they couldn’t sell, in the large commercial size rolls.

No-one does any earthquake prepping here in Portland. But they are all convinced that we will all die when the CSZ comes. Someone recently told me Portland will have 30,000 dead.

CSZ fear is used for political purposes, to justify just about any public works project and any demolition of an old buildings, the developers even tried to get all masonry buildings automatically tagged as “unsafe” with mandatory warning notices to all who enter. They found a 1990s list of a few thousand Portland “unreinforced masonry“ (URM) buildings and were going to have city council categorically tag everything on the list. The idea, of course, was that those buildings would become uninsurable and unfinanceable, their owners would be forced to firesale them, and voila cheap developable lots in the most central parts of the city! The neighborhood and historic preservation groups fought it, and some of the owners of the targeted buildings sued the city and took depositions of the city staff who prepared the list, who testified it was just a student project at the local college, undergraduates were sent to walk around and write down the address of anything that looked from the sidewalk like it was made of brick, with no idea if it was reinforced, merely clad with brick veneer, etc. The “URM project” fell apart.

Digression, over. Anyway, I do have a teeny little bit of earthquake fetish, or maybe I just miss California where we actually had them now and again.

P.S. I used to mull over what should be included in an earthquake preparedness kit, when we lived in California. Specifically, what would be really, really, really valuable after The Big One, so valuable that an unscrupulous person might barter it for . . . a Porsche, or a portfolio? I settled on * insulin * and * baby formula *. Then we had Northridge and as far as I know, there weren’t hordes of diabetics dropping dead or newborn babies starved to death. So my evil scheming, had I implemented it, would have failed. Probably a good thing?

Ok you KNOW it’s been a long time when the last update on this forum falls to page 2! What’s going on, John? Any closer to inviting us to the grand opening? Or are you enjoying summer instead?

I missed the last few comments about CSZ until now. I have lived in the PNW my whole 78 year life and I just don't worry about earthquakes at all. I only worry when they start, until they stop, because, if they last any length of time you just can't tell how bad they are going to be. Like the Nisqually Earthquake, our most recent large earthquake in 2001, which shook for about a minute - a long time when your cupboards are flying open and you are watching, barefoot from the living room, your beautiful Waterford stemware crashing to the floor! As it continued to shake, I wondered if it was going to be the "big one" and continue to increase in intensity. Happily, it stopped with no damage to my actual home.

As far as Hama Hama - the current presence of Paralytic Shellfish Poison in Hood Canal is much more of a worry. Gathering oysters and digging clams at my friends' cabin there won't be happening this summer.

I haven’t read back through everything yet, but will note that I could do your drywall if I lived closer, John. lol! I started helping my father do drywall at the age of 10. Using joint compound is like frosting a cake for me. :)

There’s a new coffee/pastry shop that’s trying to open in July here too… they keep announcing other bakeries in ”nearby” cities whose products they’ll carry! I am hoping they’ll have someone who makes a great rye bread. lol!

Last day of me being the primary laborer on this project. DS has finished his construction training program and will be working at the project every day and going to his other job in the afternoon-evenings. A young contractor who is a good friend of DD has moved back to Portland from Spain, and will work for me full time for a couple months. I finally have a issued Change of Use permit. Things are looking up!

DD and I were working today and she took some “action shots”. I’m framing a support wall in the basement garage, the structural permit only requires the studs and sills, but I think I’ll cover it with Densply and fit a solid, lockable door, to make a secure little room for tools. In normal cafe operation, this room will hold the grease interceptor and cleaning stuff.

Starting to locate stuff in the coffee bar. It will be an, ahem, compact space. Still, you can do a lot in a little area if it’s optimzed. I’ve been watching videos of a French navy chef cooking risotto and duck breast for 120 on a French missile submarine in a kitchen not much larger than a minivan.

I am looking forward to closing up the walls and starting with finishes and details. Here is an old leaded glass window I’m thinking of incorporating in my office.