Save Money…. Buy Used

I need A LOT of equipment.  And a lot of that equipment is not cheap equipment.  Just in the main ice cream machines I have purchased - 3 rolled ice cream, 5 soft serve, a glycol chiller for the soft serves, and a batch freezer for the dipped ice cream – I have spent over $40,000… all used.  For new versions of each, it would probably be closer to $120,000, although I would have only gotten 3 soft serve machines instead of 5.

I have been watching and buying at local (because we still have to go pick the stuff up, but still as far away as Columbia, MO) online auctions for well over a year now.  I have gotten several items I need, and several that I thought I wanted, but now that I’m actually trying to place things, am not so sure I do.  Some things have been really good deals, some have been okay deals.

Or so I have thought.

The 3 rolled ice cream machines that I got last summer are small and easy to move around and use.  So they were also very easy to test and practice on right after I got them.  Out of the three, one of them wouldn’t even turn on.  It was actually an easy fix that I could do myself – just purchased a $5 on/off rocker switch, take a couple covers off and replace it.  I don’t recall now whether it was that one or another one, but one of them had another issue that wasn’t so simple to fix – it wouldn’t freeze.  A couple hundred dollars later, Jones Air Conditioning had checked it and recharged it, but couldn’t actually find a leak so couldn’t promise it would continue to work.  So far, it has been doing fine.

Now that I actually have a location and have somewhere to put everything and start using them, I have been getting frustrated with many of my larger dollar items.  Just before the balloon festival, I found out that a commercial one door freezer I got, doesn’t cool at all.  A commercial one door refrigerator, seemed to cool fairly well…. for almost the whole first day.

About a week later, I was finally able to get a new 220 volt outlet installed for the Emery Thompson batch freezer I received in January.  This is about a $16,000 piece of equipment that was a little under a year old.  I got it for a few thousand less with shipping included.  This is a 19” x 24” x 36” 300 pound piece of equipment – not something you want to be picking up and moving or trying to ship much.

I still had several gallons of the cold brew coffee mixed with milk from the balloon festival, so I decided I would experiment with freezing this and see what it would do or if I could make something usable out of it.  It was old enough that whatever I made with this batch would be personal use, but it would be a good opportunity to possibly come up with a future product.  So, I added a bunch of sugar to some of it, put it in and turned it on.  10 minutes later, regular ice cream would be done, this still looked the same.  15 minutes.  20 minutes.  I dumped it and started doing some troubleshooting and research and found a YouTube video from the manufacturer on how to do a freeze test in less than 60 seconds.  My cylinder barely got cold, it never came close to frosting up and freezing!

Not quite the ice cream consistency I was looking for

I ended up calling the manufacturer’s support and after a little talking and showing them videos and a picture of the info plate on the machine, he verified that it was indeed manufactured in April 2021 and then continued to look up the serial number and said “Oh.  I know this machine.”  Grrreeeaat.  That doesn’t sound good.  Turns out, the previous owner was a “bearcat” (his wording) to get along with and they had tried getting in to work on this machine under warranty, but was never able to do so.  Unfortunately, the warranty 1) was now up as it was more than a year old, but that wouldn’t have mattered because 2) is non-transferable.  Personally, I think this is ridiculous when manufacturers do that – the machine is the machine, if they believe it is good for a year, it should be good for a year regardless of who owns it.  But I wasn’t going to argue or complain, it is how it is and how many places do it.  I stayed nice.

It turns out that both the manufacturer and the broker I purchased the machine through are being very nice.  Although Emery Thompson won’t fix the machine under warranty even though they knew it was bad while it was still under warranty, they did say that if I paid to ship it to them in Florida and back to me (remember, this is a 300 pound piece of equipment, so that means freight pricing), they would fix it for free.  And the broker I purchased it through has offered to pay for half of whatever it costs me to have it fixed, whether that is shipping it to Emery Thompson, or having someone local come fix it.  I am working on getting a quote to see how much it will cost to have it fixed, then possibly a quote on how much it would cost to ship it to Florida.  I’m guessing the freight to Florida is going to be $1000+, but it would also be fixed by the manufacturer.  So, we’ll see.

My guess is that if I would have been able to test it when I received it, it would have probably worked.  The previous owner, knowing that it was bad and probably has a Freon leak, but knowing it is a $16,000 machine and wanting to get as much out of it as possible, probably paid a couple hundred dollars to have it recharged right before they shipped it.  If you were going to sell something like that, knowing it was bad but not telling them so and knowing the broker would hold the money for a couple weeks for time to test it to make sure it is okay, wouldn’t it be worth the couple hundred dollars? :(

Advance another week or so, and I decide I would like to display my cheesecakes I’m planning to do on July 11^th in my refrigerated display case.  And while I’m at it, I have a refrigerated prep table stored in the same spot, I should test that as well.  I move the prep table to an outlet, it’s easy enough to move.  I grab an extension cord for the display case.  I let them both run for a few hours and the display case is around 40 degrees.  The prep table, hasn’t cooled one bit.  Unfortunately, when it came to actually using that display case on the 11th, it was only cooling to about 70 degrees.

Between all of these cooling items and 4 of my 7 air conditioners not working, I'll be keeping Jones Air Conditioning busy for a bit.  (Update: After Jones looked at things - not worked on, just looked at so far because with everything I had for him to look at, that took a couple hours - I need to try cleaning the condensers on the display case and commercial refrigerator & freezer.  A little elbow grease on my part will hopefully be worth the savings.)

The only large ticket items that I got other than what I have mentioned is a double oven, which the top oven works great - only goes to 350 degrees, but that’s all it’s designed for – the bottom one only seems to get to about 250 which I think is not right because everything looks the same for both ovens, but the bottom one is missing the actual knobs with the temperatures on them.  Then I have a commercial dishwasher, which I got REALLY cheap, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it doesn’t work, but I have found that I won’t have a place to actually use it, so I won’t know.  And I have a 6 burner gas cook stove because I was going to use gas, but I never have and really not sure that I want to, so I’m’ not going to be using it either.  (Anyone interested in buying a gas stove?)  The soft serve ice cream machines and glycol chiller I haven’t actually received yet, so I can’t say how they are.

So what do you think is best?  Do you buy used and figure that even if you have to fix some of it, you’ll probably still come out ahead?  Or is all the headache of things not working and having to fix them worth the savings?

Jumping In!!

For several, several weeks, we debated whether to try to have a booth at our local Hot Air Balloon Festival.  The first year we started having the Hot Air Balloon Festival again a couple years ago, it had such a huge turnout they weren’t expecting that all the vendors had hour long lines and ran out of everything.  Since then, they implemented rules wanting vendors to have at least 3 people working and enough product to serve 750 people.  They didn’t want to have a repeat and get a reputation for being a poorly run festival, which then nobody would attend.

Having 3 people working wouldn’t be too difficult.  I knew my mom would help me, and my sister could fill in if needed as well.  But having enough product to serve 750 people?  The Hot Air Balloons have to have just the right conditions to take off – no rain and the wind can’t be over 10 miles per hour.  If you don’t have those conditions, or if it’s too hot (since it’s done at our local airport there is no shade), how well is the Festival going to be attended?  I’m not regularly open, so if I don’t sell through the product at the festival, I don’t have an outlet to sell it afterward.

Heat treating the flour for edible cookie dough - gotta love a big oven like this!

50 lbs. of lemons to squeeze for lemonade.

Finally, about 10 days before the festival, the weather forecast had no rain, it was supposed to be hot, and the wind – well, that’s hard to say but most days the forecast said 11 – 15 mph.  A little high, but hopefully it would be okay.  I decided I would “take the jump.”  I decided to offer Iced Cold Brew Coffee, with beans roasted locally by Jackrabbit Coffee in Hiawatha, KS.  I would premix in milk for the festival to make things go faster and it would be available either plain, or with in-house made caramel or mocha syrup.  We would also have Iced Loose Leaf Brewed Tea with tea leaves from The Tea Smith in Omaha, NE and Fresh Squeezed Real Lemonade.  Both of these would also be available plain or with in-house made fresh strawberry or peach syrup and/or popping pearls.  I figured if I made 20 gallons of each drink, it would be enough for 350 – 400 servings – not nearly what we were supposed to have, but I would also have 240 bottles of water to come closer.

I wanted to have a snack of some sort as well as the drinks, so I decided to also offer brownie bites, edible cookie dough in birthday cake, chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chip, peanut butter & snickerdoodle, and candied popcorn in a few fruit flavors.  Because I like everything to be as fresh as possible and I underestimated how long it would take to make stuff all by myself, I only got all the drinks, syrups, brownie bites and two kinds of edible cookie dough finished after staying up until 1:00 am Friday night and getting back up at 5:00 am Saturday morning and calling my mom in to help Saturday morning.

Our stand at the Hot Air Balloon Festival

The view from our stand as the sun sets and they put on a show with their fire, since they can't actually blow up their balloons.

Saturday afternoon came and we got our booth setup at the festival.  It was a hot evening with no rain to be seen, but there was a nice wind to help keep things a little cooler – but also forced the balloons to not be able to take off.  The newspaper says there was about 2,200 in attendance.  We went through about 7 gallons of lemonade, 2 gallons of tea and a gallon of coffee, serving around 75 drinks.  We also went through probably between one and two dozen cookie dough/brownie bites.  If you do the math… + - * / … that means we had A LOT of stuff left over!!!

It was an interesting and fun event to do, but we definitely learned a lot too.  For one, we can’t do an event that requires us to have so much stuff, especially when we don’t have a regular way to sell the extra if we don’t sell it.  We did decide to try opening out shop a few hours during the day on Sunday and also Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings since I don’t work my other overnight job those nights.  Hopefully we could sell some of our extra during these times, but we aren’t normally open and it’s hard to get word out on such short notice.  Since we were going to be open in our shop, we added rolled ice cream to help bring more customers in with the cookie dough / brownie bites as the only available flavors to help use them.  The rolled ice cream definitely helped – it was our most popular item.  We went through another couple gallons or so of our drinks as well and got some recognition and reputation started, so it was a good thing, but we still had a lot of waste.

Thank you to a local business, who wanted to remain anonymous, for letting me store the 60 gallons of drinks in their walk-in for several hours before and a couple days after the event, and to A&G Restaurant for letting me store the remainder in their walk-ins after that.  I so appreciate everything the community helps me with!

Our front A/C must have a Freon leak and needs replaced

One more expensive surprise, like our last post discussed about our fuse box, we learned our air conditioner that cools the front of our shop wasn’t working very well.  Since we aren’t actually open, we haven’t been keeping it cool, so we didn’t know until we turned it on for these few days.  It was in the 90s most of these days and our shop stayed between 86 and 94.  We had Jones Air Conditioning come look at it, and it’s out of Freon and it’s an old unit that takes a kind that isn’t made anymore – it would be in the lower hundreds just to recharge it, plus labor to try to find the leak – and if they can find the leak, hopefully be able to fix it.  The other alternative is to replace it with a newer, more efficient unit.  We’re getting a price for that to see if it’s something we want to do now, or if we want to try to cobble something together from another unit that cools the back room (which we have blocked off) to force it to cool the front room until we get closer to actual opening.  Either way, we have to do something before the end of August so it is cool when we’re open for Cobblestone.  Always run in to those surprises! :)

We aren’t totally out on all of our excess product.  We are having our Fairy Floss at another softball tournament with the local girl scouts concessions this weekend, and they agreed to let us bring our brownie bites & edible cookie dough to sell as well and we're donating as much tea as they need for the weekend.  We also have a local restaurant, A&G Restaurant, who is taking our lemonade and selling it – and hopefully, possibly offering it in the future as well?  So, we still have quite a bit of waste, but hopefully it won’t be as bad as it could have been – and it was a good learning experience!

What to do first....

     We have started several of our simple remodeling projects all at the same time.  We are still trying to get in touch with an architect to draw up our plans for our main remodeling to get it approved by the fire marshal.  I had a recommendation from someone and have tried calling them 3 or 4 times over the past month, leaving a message twice, but haven't heard back from them.

Basement divider wall coming out!

     

Taking the peg board off the walls upstairs unfortunately didn't reveal I nice painted wall underneath.

     When we had several warm days a few weeks ago, I started tearing out the 6' tall divider wall in the basement because it was cooler to work down there.  I also wanted to get the electricity that was being run to that wall to reroute to the back wall for a 220 plug-in (yes, it was using two breakers for the wall, so I can turn the 110s in to a 220) for my batch maker so I can start making ice cream.  I have gotten it taken down, and will be rerouting it hopefully within the next week or so.

     I had started taking the peg board off the walls upstairs simply to see what the walls looked like behind it, but kept going for one whole wall before thinking of something.  A lot of the materials I'm removing, I will be using somewhere else.  But I don't have a use for all the peg board and I was planning to offer it for sale.  Why am I doing the work of taking it down if someone else would prefer to get it a little cheaper for simply taking a few screws out and saving me the time?  So, I stopped doing that for now.

Peg board for sale.  Some unpainted, some off-white, some grey.

     If you need any peg board, let me know.  From what I have seen, it typically costs around $23 per 4'x8' sheet.  We're selling what we have, which is about 75 sheets, for $13 if we pull it down or $10 if you pull it.  We have quite a bit painted off white, some painted grey and some not painted at all, still the slick brown color.  We also have a few half and 3/4 sheets as well.

There were holes in the tile, so the tile's coming up in the ladies rest room.

     The other project I've just started is tearing out the floor tile in the ladies restroom.  It had a few holes in it, so it has to be replaced.  While we're replacing it, we're going to cover the guys floor as well even though it isn't to the point of "having" to be done yet.  I've got all the baseboard pulled up and some of the tile pulled.  That will probably be the main remodeling project I try to get done next.

     It's funny how your priorities sometimes get changed for you when you're doing this kind of work.  We got a notice last week from our insurance that they were cancelling our policy because we have a fuse box in the building.  We also have at least 5 or 6 breaker boxes, and only 5 of the fuses are being used, but since they are there - our insurance will not be.

Pay attention to me... NOW.  The fuse box the insurance says has to be replaced immediately.

     We knew we were going to have to put a new, bigger breaker box in for all of the equipment we're going to have - so this wasn't something unexpected.  However, it is going to be a long time before we're to the point of needing that part done.  It was going to be a project probably a year down the road.  All of a sudden, I called our electrician, Wiltse Electric, and asked if he could come see what needs to be done and get it done within 3 weeks.  He met me at the shop 5 minutes later to look it over and is now working on getting what he needs and working me in to his schedule in the next 3 weeks.  A great help considering I know he, as well as any other electrician in the area, are backed up 3 months or more.

     I'm sure this is just the first of several things we will run in to that are either unexpected, or just having to be done sooner than expected.

As for being up and running......

Our setup for selling Fairy Floss at the ball tournament concessions.

Our flavors sign for concessions - do you see what is wrong with it?

     We had our first sales event this past weekend.  Our town's softball teams sponsored a tournament Saturday and Sunday for 4 different age groups from 8 & Under to 18 & Under (I think.)  16 teams in town on Saturday and 18 on Sunday.  The local girl scouts do concessions for them, and I got to setup our Fairy Floss (cotton candy) machine to sell along with them, letting them make some money from it as well.

     It was small and simple, and made for a VERY long weekend for me, but it was a nice start.  I didn't ask for the weekend off from my other job, so I had to work 10:00 pm to a little after 7:00 am Friday, Saturday & Sunday nights.  Friday evening, after closing my computer store at 5:00 and taking my sister home, I met with the girl scout leader to see if there was enough space, and then setup.  I got done about 7:00.  The tournament started at 8:30 both days, but I chose to sleep for a couple hours both days before starting my concession day at 10:00.  I stopped both days around 6:30, cleaned up the machine and area and getting to bed about 7:30.  So I basically slept 2 hours each Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday evening, Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Monday morning.

     Some of the little things you learn as you go.  Do you see anything wrong with our flavors sign?  I'll tell you what's wrong with it in a moment.

     This was the first time using this machine for more than a couple batches, so I learned some tricks for using it through the weekend as well.  As you do more and more Fairy Floss, the sugar builds up on the rim of the center spinner.  This causes it not to come out as fluffy.  But instead of turning it off and letting it cool down so you can clean it off, you can just tap it with the metal sugar scoop and knock the sugar off - voila, you have beautiful, fluffy Fairy Floss again.

     If I ever wondered which flavors to get rid of and which to keep, I learned Radiant Raspberry (Blue Raspberry, the standard blue you see at all the fairs - the standard pink is Pink Vanilla) is by far a favorite.  Over the weekend, we sold 139 total.  53 of those were Radiant Raspberry, followed by Bustin Bubble Gum at 22 and Watermelon at 18.  We sold at least 1 of every flavor.

     I also learned that I want to come up with something else to offer to sell with the girl scouts to make the time a little more worth it.  They invited me back for another league tournament the last weekend of the month - I will brainstorm some ideas of something they aren't already selling that I could offer.

     So, did you figure out what was wrong with the flavors sign?  It only took about 15 minutes after I started Saturday morning for me to figure it out.  I thought it looked really nice when I made it...... but when the 7, 8, 10 year-olds came up and we asked what flavor they wanted, they haven't learned to read cursive or script yet.  With Fairy Floss, a good portion of your audience is going to be young kids.  I simply wrote the flavors out on another sheet of paper and we put it out as well.

The Approved Kitchen

      Another week or so is down and we're making progress.

     The biggest news of the week is that we are now an approved kitchen!!  We have a food permit to sell to the public and to others for resale.  We will hopefully be using that within a of couple weeks.

     I knew this was one of my first goals, so I've been concentrating on the kitchen to begin with.  Since it was an approved kitchen before, there wasn't a whole lot that had to be done, but it needed to be cleaned up and a few things taken care of.  

     The countertop was pulling away from the wall just enough that there was a hole in the silicone, so I resealed that with new silicone.

     The vinyl on the floor right up against the cabinets was frayed and broken.  I didn't want to replace the vinyl, especially since this is only a temporary kitchen until we remodel upstairs to make our nice kitchen.  I thought about using silicone, but thought that although it may seal it, it would be messy and not look good.  I finally came up with the idea of getting some quarter round from Home Lumber (couldn't find a page to link) and staining it.  It worked perfectly, covering up and sealing the bad vinyl.

     The lighting at the counters wasn't bad.  I think by code, it probably would have been fine, but I wanted a little more.  I ordered just basic, rechargeable led lights to stick under each cabinet.

     Of course, everything needed wiped down and cleaned since it hadn't been used in a while.

     And finally, I noticed the faucet on the sink leaked out of the top and the seal between the sink and faucet was bad, so it leaked underneath a bit.  There inlays a story of the amateur plumber. :)

     

     (If you want the short version, I had a bit of a time getting the faucet replaced as well as having to replace the shut offs underneath, but I managed after a couple days.  Now you can skip to the next pictures.)

     If you've been reading the blog so far, you know that I had the plumber hat on last week as well.  It took a while, but I successfully figured out how to get an air gap in the drain for the sink.

     I figured this little faucet leak was an easy fix.  So I went to True Value again and got a new faucet.  I got under the sink, turned the water off and took out the old faucet, easy.  I put the new faucet on, siliconed it in and connected it, easy.  I knew it wouldn't be a hard replacement.

     But then, I turned the water back on.  I guess these shut offs hadn't been turned off in a while.  They leaked like crazy before I ever even had the chance to test the faucet.  (Don't leave yet, it gets better.)

     So now, I need to figure out how to turn the water off before the shut offs.  I go behind the wall (yes, it's so nice to have a 4' walkway behind the wall) and start tracing the pipes.  The nearest shut off I can find for the hot water is at the hot water heater, which isn't too far away, but also shuts off the hot water for the hand wash sink and the two bathrooms.  The cold water, on the other hand, has a shut off about half way to the hot water heater, but it's knob is missing.  I keep tracing and figure out that to shut the cold water off, I'm going to have to shut the water off where it comes in to the building.

     I open the lines to drain the pipes as much as possible.  The hot water, only runs for a few seconds, but the cold water seems to keep running longer than I think it should, and then more yet.  It can't be coming from the main, I shut it off before the water meter.  Then the water starts getting warmer?!  That's when I think about one of the pipes I passed getting to the main shut off - an off shoot that came down, had a shut off and then went up through the ceiling.  I realized this must be the water supply for the apartment all the way upstairs, and it has it's own hot water heater - I'm draining that hot water heater through the cold water faucet in the basement.  I went and turned it off, and the water finally stopped.

     I start trying to get the shut offs under the sink off with the tools that I have so I can take them with me to True Value to get new ones.  In trying to do all of this, I have ended up taking the drain pipes (yes, my beautiful air gap drain pipes) back out so that I can get to the water lines easier.  I had managed to install the faucet with only knocking one fitting loose.  These shut offs aren't going to let me get them off that easily.  I finally give up and wait until the next day to get new shut offs and a pipe wrench to do the job correctly.

     It's a couple days later before I get a chance to work on it again, but I got the pipe wrench and the new shut offs.  I go back to work on it and as I'm getting the first shut off loose, I know I'm getting somewhere because it starts dripping, letting the water behind it out.  I grab a bucket, put underneath and continue.  Until I get it off and water is SPRAYING out.

     I forgot that I had turned the water back on after the failed attempt a couple days ago.  Luckily, I was working on the hot water, which the shut off is much closer and easier to get to, but it's still 30 feet away, through two doorways and in a hallway that doesn't have much light unless you go 10 feet away from the water heater to a pull chain light.  Needless to say, for the next half hour, I was cleaning up water from under the sink and all over the floor.  My bucket didn't catch hardly any! :)  Plus, come to find out, I had purchased the wrong shut offs - I had ones with the threads on the outside of the 3/8" side - I needed the threads on the inside.  But, of course, True Value, only two blocks away, makes an easy exchange, so that was only an annoyance, not a problem.

     The rest went fine and I now have a working kitchen sink again.

Our temporary kitchen - before

Our temporary kitchen - after

     With all the work that was done, the state health inspector had no problem giving us our food permit with only a couple things that I had forgotten that I still needed to do, such as having hand wash signs at all the hand sinks and a policy printed out for how we will clean up if someone throws up, etc... very minor things.

     The other thing we accomplished Sunday, when I had my family to help and plenty of time, was cleaning the front windows.  And when I say clean, I don't mean just running some soapy water and a squeegee over them.  No.  After about 4 hours of my mom, my sister and myself scraping and peeling, we got all the old vinyl wording and logos off the windows.

     We now have beautiful, clean & clear windows ready for whatever we decide to do.  I know the furthest two windows to the south, I plan to put a photo op on - using the dotted window coverings.  It will serve a quadruple purpose.

1. Let passersby know what the business is about, at least in some way.
2. A photo op that will hopefully be cute enough we'll have a lot of people using it and posting on social media - YAY, free advertising.
3. Shade the kid's room from the harsh morning sun since we will not be able to get an awning ($15,000 for the kind we want) to begin with and since there are no buildings on the east side of the street to block the sun in the mornings.
4. Provide privacy from the outside for the kid's room.  If you put your face right up against the window, you can kind of see in, but otherwise, it's really hard to see through that stuff from the outside.  From the inside, you can see out nearly unobstructed.

     The rest of the windows, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with.  I don't know if I want to put vinyl on them again with our name, logo, products, etc. or if I want to hang signs that can change from time to time much easier.  We'll see as the time comes.

     Thank you, once again, for reading our post.  Let us know if you're enjoying it.  If you can't comment here (my mom had trouble getting it to allow her to comment), then let us know on facebook, instagram or twitter.

Week 1 (plus a little)

     Here we go....

     Before we started doing any work, we wanted to do some "before" stuff.  I had planned to do a live walk-through on Facebook Friday evening, but I didn't get a chance to wander through much during the day to get prepared, including figuring out the lights.  I believed they were on a breaker, but all the breakers seemed to be fine so I wanted to get some new bulbs to try.  However, by the time I discovered this, all the stores in town were closed.  So, I pushed the live event back to Saturday evening.

     By Saturday evening, I was more prepared, but still hadn't figured out the lights for the two large rooms - the new bulbs didn't fix the problem.  So I adjusted the spot lights that were working to provide the best lighting I could and went for it anyway.  I was planning on starting to move stuff in on Sunday.

Watch on YouTube or Facebook

(Bare with me, I need to get a better at videos!)

     I also went through the entire building and took "before" photos - nearly 200 in total.  You'll get to see many of those throughout the build-out process, I'm sure!

     Sunday came and it was time to get several things I had in storage units moved in to the store.  I'm not ready to use them yet, but why pay storage fees when I have a lot of extra room I'm not using anyway.  This included several large (and very heavy) display cases, a refrigerator, freezer, gas stove, prep table cooler, and dishwasher.

     

more photos on Instagram

     There are a few big Thank You's I want to send out.

     Thank you to Rachel Witt for working with me and being so patient.  We've been working to get this building for around 10 months now!  She has also gone above and beyond expectations to help me get the building, has included many items with the building that will help me along, and is/has cleaned up beyond what is necessary for someone to do after the building has already been sold.

     Thank you to Jones Air Conditioning for cutting us some pipes to roll the display cases on.

     Thank you to Randy Gilsdorf for securing a trailer as well as helping move and Derek Olberding, my mom, Vernell Schutte, and my sister, Danielle Schutte, for also helping to move all of this equipment.

     Through the week, I explored the building a lot to see what all was where, hidden rooms, what controlled what, etc.   I also started my first, simple project that I believe I will have to do to get a food license.  There now has to be an air gap in the drain of whatever sinks you're going to use as a prep sink.  There currently was not one.

     I originally planned on putting the air gap on the right sink drain since, to me, it seemed like the logical side to put it looking at the drain pipes, especially considering the dishwasher drains in to the left side.

I forgot to take a before - the right side was originally attached

     I ran in to problem after problem.  These drain pipes aren't the same standard size as the PVC pipes that have the reducer (the cup to catch the water).  So when the drain pipe said right on it that it was 1 1/2" and I got the 3" to 1 1/2" reducer, it slid right through the hole.  Drain pipe under a sink is measured "inside dimension", whereas the regular PVC drain pipe is measure "outside diameter."

     I finally figured out I could use a rubber reducer to go from the 1 1/2" outside diameter to the 1 1/2" insider diameter.  First problem solved.

     I am sitting at my store looking at the parts I have thinking that I figured it out, only to realize that the reducer itself is nearly the full height of the pipe I had taken off and was going to cut for the drain.  I still had to have 1" air gap AND the height of the rubber reducer AND the height of the pipe going between the two reducers.  This wasn't going to work - now what?

     I finally came up with the brilliant idea to put the air gap on the left drain instead of the right one and add in a second trap to get the pipe starting at a lower position.  Once I came up with this idea, went to the stores for the 4th or 5th time, and tried my idea, it worked!!

I figured out how to get an air gap!

     Another round of Thank You's are due.  Thank You to True Value and Ace Hardware Farm & City Supply for putting up with me coming in, bugging you and picking your brains trying to figure out how to do this, as well as the parts to do it.  And a extra Thank You to Brett Keller at Farm & City Supply for not making me buy a full stick of 1 1/2" PVC for the 4 inches that I needed! :)

     And finally, the last newsworthy, and slightly disappointing tidbit from this first week.

    In the large back rooms on the main floor, the north side will be the kitchen, the south side will be comfortable seating, I was hoping to take the pegboard down to expose the brick walls on the outside walls.  I thought this would be a neat look and you could see the brick above the peg board.

     Turns out, once I removed the peg board, the brick was only just above it.  Behind the peg board, there is a concrete type mixture on the wall.  So much for the brick look!  I was also hoping that when I took the peg board off the inside walls here, I would be greeted with a nice white wall like above the peg board there.  Disappointment again.  It's plain, unpainted drywall on the upper half, and what looks like glue from possibly carpet from when it was a theatre on the bottom half.  But, these are easy enough to work with, just not what I had been hoping for.

     When I took the first panel of peg board down, I found this.  Does anyone know for sure who's name that is?  I think I can read it, but not sure.

     Our first week is down.... we have a long, looong way to go.  But we're extremely excited to be doing this.  Be sure to like our Facebook page so you know when we publish new blog posts and all the other great things we share on there.

     And Thank YOU for taking the time to read through, follow us on our journey and support as in anyway you can.  That is the best gift we could ask for!

We have a home!!

We are so excited to have finally officially gotten our new home on Thursday, April 28th, 2022!  We will be located at 1715 Stone St. in Falls City, Nebraska.  Now comes the build-out part, getting it ready.

You are invited to come along and see what all it takes for us to get everything ready.  We'll post regularly - maybe not every week, but quite often - so you can see the progress as it's being made.  Feel free to ask any questions, leave any comments, or send us suggestions.  We love to hear from you!

There are several ways to follow along with other aspects of our new shop as well.

• Blogger - Smiley Bee Build-Out
• Facebook - SmileyBeeSweets
• Instagram - SmileyBeeSweetsFC
• Twitter - SmileyBeeSweets
• YouTube - Smiley Bee
• Website - SmileyBeeSweets.com

Choose your favorites and follow along.  Leave us words of encouragement and ideas you would like to see!