Articles
Notes from the job site
What we have learned running renovations, build-outs and furniture installs: costs, schedules, contracts and the details that decide opening day.
Parking garage lobbies and elevator lobbies: renovations that change first impressions
Stand in the elevator lobby of a parking garage that opened a decade ago and you can tell in about four seconds whether the building takes care of itself. Flic…
Read the article →Cold storage interiors: panels, doors, washdown finishes and offices
There was a chalk line across the floor of a leased warehouse bay we were called into last winter, and it marked where the cooler was going to start. Everythin…
Read the article →Urgent care and outpatient clinic build-outs that open on the date
The space was a mattress store. It had a glass front, a bare floor, a sixteen-foot ceiling and one restroom. Fourteen weeks later it needed to be a clinic with…
Read the article →Event venue and banquet hall interiors, finished for the first booking
A venue owner books the first wedding before the ballroom has drywall on it. That booking is a contract with a deposit and a family, and it does not move becau…
Read the article →Coworking build-outs: dense offices, quiet walls, a fixed open date
Walk a finished coworking floor and count the doors. A conventional office of the same size might have fifteen. A flex-office floor can have sixty, plus a doze…
Read the article →Grocery and convenience store interiors that open on the lease date
On a grocery job the first drawing that has to be right is not the floor plan. It is the refrigeration schedule. Where the condensers sit, how the line sets ru…
Read the article →Bank branch build-outs: vault, drive-up and the brand package
The vault door arrives on a flatbed and weighs more than the rest of the branch's millwork combined. Where it lands, and whether the floor under it was designe…
Read the article →Building a veterinary clinic: drains, noise, imaging and finishes
The hose bib in the kennel run tells you everything about a veterinary clinic. Somebody is going to wash that floor down every day, with a chemical strong enou…
Read the article →Childcare center build-outs that pass licensing the first time
A childcare center has two opening dates, and only one of them is on our schedule. The first is the day construction finishes. The second is the day the state…
Read the article →Amenity floor renovations in podium multifamily buildings
The clubroom in a podium apartment building usually sits directly over the parking level, and the first thing we check before we touch a wall is what's already…
Read the article →Self-storage offices and retail fronts: the part customers walk into
A customer renting a storage unit sees three things before they ever reach their unit: the leasing office, the retail wall of boxes and locks by the counter, a…
Read the article →Brewery and taproom construction: tanks, drains and opening night
The tanks arrived before the floor was ready for them, which is the most expensive way to learn that a brewhouse is built around its equipment and not the othe…
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