Migration!

So my buddys keep telling me that Wordpress is the way to go. I'll be migrating the blog in the next couple days to its new address, and i promise to have lots of updates. The spot is starting to actually look like a restaurant!

My sincerest apologies for lagging on the updates. Once Wordpress is up and running, I'll be sure to update regularly... more regularly.

HVAC 101

So the biggest PITA is this godzilla hood as I mentioned previously. With seating all over the restaurant, the ventilation system spiders throughout the entire space, and dominates the ceiling cavity. The delays to this segment of the project were due to 2 things: The original plan called for 1 singular ventilation shaft, which meant that whenever the ventilation switched on, it didn't matter if there were 2 people or 42 people eating, the system operated at 100% capacity. This didn't make any sense to us, so we decided to re-engineer the plans to accommodate a larger shaft which would allow us to operate at half or full power. This would be significantly more energy efficient.

Our original plan had an open ceiling design, but the health department denied our request, and decided that we should clad literally every surface from floor to ceiling. They had initially approved it, only to go back and change their minds. Of course the build cost was affected by this due to the extra framing and now excessive amount of drywall. More money just fell out of our pocket.

The 6 month exterior plan... I think...

Since for some inexplicable reason it can take up to 4 months for the city to review an exterior facade design submission, we decided to get our plan ready for submission after we open the doors. Normally we would submit interior and exterior plans simultaneously, but since we were frantically preoccupied with getting our interior layout approved, the exterior planning fell to the wayside.

The rendering above was the first one submitted by our designer Yukiko, which I have to admit I wasn't too thrilled about, but this was early on in our relationship together. After showing her some of the art and design that I loved, Yukiko was able to start tweaking things more to our liking.

As with everything else in this build, nothing is as simple as it seems. Despite the possibility of a city approval for exterior re-facading, the owner of the building has not been the easiest to sell on big changes. We're hoping that they'll finally realize that our building is starting to give Norm's a run for their money. We really hope that our rendering can become a reality and isn't just a teaser of a pipe dream.

ALCOHOL!!

Another Chair Teaser!

This is all you're gonna get for now. We need to leave some surprises! In the vein of creating some design cohesion between our shops, we decided that our chairs had to be cool. The Emeco Navy chair has been used in so many places, including some McDonalds!! I'm sure McD's won't have this one.

Framing 101

I've never seen so much framing in such a small area. There was an insane amount of detailed framing that was needed to create the angles and curves.

As far as I could tell, the framing looked great. There's little cuts in the steel everywhere!! Definitely time and labor consuming. Raphael and his crew did an awesome job.

Big Invader from MOCA

Codak, paint our walls please!

Since there are barely any actual walls to start covering, this is a teaser for us all. Hopefully Codak will be gracing some of our wallspace with his unique organic style, but for now you can see his work along with other collaborations at a small gallery show going on now at Holdup Art in Little Tokyo. Codak also has upcoming shows at the CAVE Gallery on Abbot Kinney as well as an upcoming one at Pasadena's Museum of California Art May 14.

The last thing you ever want to see during construction

An empty inspection card means no approvals, or no work, or no inspections, or all of the above! Actually, this is from a week ago. I think there may be one or two new little scribbles now. But we still need more!!!!!

Sket One has finally landed in LA! Can you paint our walls now please???

You've probably seen Sket's retro 50's style pop art gracing the boxes of KidRobot's 2010 Dunny series, and he's finally made the migration to the Westside. Not only is he a talented artist and entrepreneur, but he and us at California Shabu have a common thread through our involvement with the non-profit organization Stoked and love for art.

Sket, now a KidRobot veteran, also has art, clothing, and dozens of vinyl characters to his name. Hopefully he'll have time in his schedule to bomb our walls!

I first met Sket after purchasing a piece of his at the 2009 Stoked auction thanks to Rita who put us in touch. He has a lot lined up for the year, and hopefully you'll be seeing some of his art on our walls soon.

WMD/RED

Electrical 101

400 Amps!! Its still barely enough. We don't even have enough extra power to get an extra outlet in the camera room!?

Hmm, one computer, one monitor, one DVR, one music receiver... one outlet?! We're going to need a very expensive surge protector. :{

Walking through the site and seeing incompletions everywhere can be depressing, and you feel like the project will never reach the end. Abandoning all hope...

Sometimes it can be so stressful seeing missing pieces of the build, made even worse by the lengthy planning delays. Finally seeing the wiring go in was somewhat of a feeble relief. We are still so far behind schedule, but at least John the electrician did a bad ass job! It was like an oasis amidst a sea of trash and chaos. Sexy! I wish my panel at home looked like this.

3D 4 Real

Main Front High Bar

This is the first time we've ever had real 3D renderings that actually looked ultra-realistic, and also the first round of interior design mockups. I'm sure it looks a hundred times better than real life, but it definitely sells itself on paper.

Middle Counter Bar

Entryway

Since the floor level of the restaurant is slightly below the street elevation, we lose quite a bit of square footage addressing the level drop. Why couldn't it just be flat?

Facelift Definitely Needed

Even though the retro 80's are back, doesn't mean our exterior color scheme should match! This brings us to yet another city application; exterior signage. Approvals take 4-6 months on average, but we couldn't risk the back and forth jeopardizing our main restaurant build, so we'll have to suffer the peach/cream and teal trim color palette until someday when the city approves us... Maybe we'll just make a really big vinyl banner and just use that forever.

If visiting MOCA, PLEASE READ FIRST...

Hopefully nobody is getting overloaded with art, because there's more coming. After visiting the MOCA show again, I found "street art" on the streets!! Whaaatt???!! But I stumbled upon it by accident, and don't think the museum really publicized any of this work. About 3 short blocks away from the museum in the area surrounding 3rd and Traction, there are art and graf pieces everywhere you turn. If you have any trouble finding the area, just search for Sci-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) on your phone and just start wandering their parking lots.

The Evolution of a Floorplan

By some absolute sheer stroke of luck, the prior tenant had been an attempted shabu restaurant, so we were able to reconfigure and salvage some of the partially built systems. Still, the meat and bones of the build had not yet been completed.

The biggest challenge by far has been our ventilation shaft which requires cutting through each of the 3 concrete floorplates. Its an engineering nightmare. The building was never built with a shaft, and isn't making it easy to shoehorn it in. Above is the original semi-existing floorplan from the old tenant.

Part of the reason this project has lagged for so long is the somewhat numerous plan changes we submitted to the city. The picture above is actually only the second half of our interior layout design process. The floorplan really morphed over time in our attempt to get the most out of the site configuration. Here's our final plan: