The week started off slowly but things moved quicker as it went along. First of all, as you can tell in the picture, we got the problem with the left side backer board fixed - the upper part is now flush with the sides so that it can be tiled all the way across, as it was originally (in the '40's). On the right side, the finish trim has started going on - the boards shown on the right are just placeholders to remind me to draw up the final pattern, which I did today
, based on the picture we have of the original storefront. (Translating an 1897 photo into the appropriate illustrations from Palladio's Quattro Libri and then back out again and into Lowes SKU numbers is something I particularly enjoy. Which is a personal problem I have, and I know it, so don't bother telling me). You might notice that the downspout boxes are out on 113 and you can see sky through the right hand one - we're keeping the ones for 111 but rebuilding the 113 so they drop straight down on the facade and not the beautiful cast-iron pilasters that frame the opening. (Color is becoming an issue - should the cast iron be black or green, and should the gutters be brown or green? Or both? Decisions, decisions...)
Inside, Saturday saw the insulation going into most of the interior walls, which means the place is beginning to take shape (and sounds a lot better, I noticed). This picture is looking down the main hall towards the break room past conference #1 and my office. 
The workers have spent the week learning how to put up metal ceilings as they first replaced bad sections of ceiling using the extras we harvested from the boys' "treehouse" in the back (we were taking it out to allow the headroom that the vaulted roof framing would allow). It took two days to learn how the cove and two border pieces were supposed to go up (two of the three had curved wooden backs so they have the correct shape once up - we didn't realize the significance of that till they were up the first time without them) which is a nice way of saying that we did it once, realized it looked like crap ,then took it down and did it again. But the effect of the restored cove and frieze panels over the back of my office (they used to be at the back of the building but that would have put them in the little seen upstairs playroom) is stunning since it brings a lot of architectural detail to where it can be seen and appreciated 
- I'm really happy that we put them up here, even though technically they were not here originally - they were hidden back in the storage mezzanine. In this picture you can see the vaulted ceiling of the "treehouse" room upstairs - more on that in future posts. The view looking forward from my office is getting better as well.
Although with all the flaked off paint the ceiling still looks superficially terrible, all the damage has been repaired and the effect is really noticeable - you can see the pattern of circles and diamonds marching across the ceiling in sharp relief thanks to the light from the high windows in front. Still have big hatch holes in the skylight shaft, but we're working on that.
A bazillion inspections are scheduled for next week as the sprinker starts to go in, a whole lot of window glass gets installed in the front, and the facade trim gradually gets put in. We're still not ready yet for sheet rock yet, since the electrical needs some more tweaking so the right conduits are in for videoconferencing, A/V and so forth, but we are inching closer.
