Its the little things that prove to be the most frustrating stumbling blocks. At the end of the today when the tile guys were set to begin, (they have been tiling at night so we don't lose days) we ran into the problem of a locked door in the basement. For whatever reason, the door to our old storage room, which is currently under construction, was locked. Shouldn't be a problem because we have a key, right? The door knob was broken. And this room was the only access to water for our tile setters. After some scrambling we found the solution (my original idea of breaking down the door did not win the day). Luckily, we are building XOCO next to Frontera and Topolo. The chefs, in particular Richard James, have a lot of tricks of their sleeves. With his help, we were able to run a hose from the kitchen, through the alley to the jobsite. It saved us a day. And at this point, every minute of every day counts.

The space is really coming together. The drywall is all up, now the carpentry crew is taping and sanding all the surfaces. It is a great feeling to see the final form come into view, and to know where walls and soffits are going to be. The next step for the walls is paint - starting next week. The crew from the restaurant supply company has started installing the stainless steel panels in the kitchen - great progress.

A couple struggles hang over the day:
We are dealing with some leaks into the basement and figuring out who bears the responsibility, our landlord or the contractor.
Some millwork pieces that were supposed to be ordered are over budget, and not by a little; we've decided to go a different direction to stainless cabinets, but don't have those nailed down yet.
The City denied our exemption for the front door of the restaurant to swing out in the sidewalk (the current configuration), and we are scrambling to find a solution.
The sign painter we hired for menu board design was way off in a meeting today - he knows to go in a different direction, but it was discouraging.
Finally, the place is a mess. Our basement where we store our liquor is a jungle and drywall dust keeps creeping into Frontera and Topolobampo.

In all, we made solid progress today. As a "green" buildout we are doing well. Jason, our superintendent is on patrol for sustainable building materials. It is his job to make sure all the different crews use sustainable materials like no-VOC caulks and glues. The USGBC doesn't mess around when it comes to LEED, so we have to get it right.

Just passed our HVAC inspection - breath of fresh air after a lot of back and forth on how we were going to get it done. We ran our main black iron, which vents all the air from the hood, up in the middle of the building. We had to do it in order to build the kitchen in the front window - which is going to be great fun to watch from the street.

Rick and I just got out of our weekly walk through with Goldberg, Farr Associates and Steve Schoop (our kitchen designer). After a long time waiting in the wings, the oven finally has a home. The question today was, what to build around it? The original framing creating the look of some hulking monster in the midst of the restaurant. With everyone's input, we came up with a great solution - slimming down the look.

Along with our rooftop garden, now we have a couple of huge rooftop heating and cooling units. The energy efficient units are creating a whole system required for LEED certification. The crane lift went down this morning - it was nerve wracking seeing them hoisted up over Illinois street.

Just put in very cool recycled denim insulation. Scraps from manufacturing jeans and other cotton fiber clothing are diverted from landfills. It takes very little processing to turn this into some of the best insulation around. Check out Bonded Logic, one of the top line manufacturers of the stuff.