A Flower Blooms in New Leaf

Teresa Sabankaya, owner of The Bonnie Doon Garden Company, is opening up shop at the Westside New Leaf. Lucky for us!



















Trying to picture it all can be just slightly overwhelming when you are standing in front of a pile of raw material.


















The raw material will be a trellis coming from the cooler box to the wall.




















I think they started lining up to do the Bunny Hop here..












Mr. Pennington (I think! Gotta double check that.) building the trellis.















This will be the floral consultation counter overlooking the seating area. Teresa would like a chalkboard to the left of the window. Juice bar is to your right, registers to the left.














There will be a counter here under the trellis which attaches to the wall on either side of the window.




















This view includes the exit to the outdoor seating area.














Cooler box and aerial space above.













There will be a bottlestone counter top lit with Johnson Art Studio lanterns on the left and café tables on the right.

Meat and Seafood Tile Turns Out Swimmingly

This is a little hard to see due to the sunlight blasting through the windows of the back room and sneaking under the soffit, but the tile looks pretty darned good. The solar eclipse of the meat department is a temporary phenonemon... when it gets a ceiling, the sun will be confined to the back room.















Here are some closer shots.














Is it me? Or does it look like sunlight on water?















































Wish us luck in the deli!

A Store is Born

It really starts feeling like a store once the aisles are demarcated.


















It was one big space, now this aisle looks almost the same as that one.


















And this one!



















Here we have a story within a story, "An Aisle is Born"















Slater guys were working on both sides to help fit the pieces of Madix shelving together...














Try as I might, I could not get both sides in the picture in one shot. It seemed to say something interesting about perspective, and seeing all sides of a story, especially when it comes to wall building.














Here Rex and Cameron break down a wall while Michael and Josh build one.















Josh is the very first guy to stare into space at the register. Perhaps he has mesmerized Jared into finishing the installation.














Cameron has the last word.

The Pile of Tile

Well, it's true, we bought a mountain of Claymonde tile from Fireclay for just $5 a square foot for every square foot we needed covered at Ingalls.... it seemed like a good idea at the time. It was really Steven's idea....he doesn't LOOK crazy, does he?












Ok, well, appearances can be deceiving. I am left to wonder if he was crazy BEFORE we bought the tile, or whether the tile is having an effect on him.


















We have our own little chicken coop of tile out in the parking lot... here is a closeup of one of the MANY piles.



















Here is some tile that has been tamed and brought inside for the Meat/Seafood department.














These are our fabulous tile guys cutting tile. I say fabulous, because they are going to turn that pile into a tile covered wall. It is really much harder than it sounds, and they really have to be patient with us. It is hard to talk art at a construction site, the timelines are just so different.















But it's important. On the right, the first attempt. On the left, the attempt at fixing it.


















This is Keith, the head tile manager. These are the same guys that did Downtown for us, so we know they have mad skills.... Here he is having a go at changing the main field of color to blue/lavender so the white and biscuit colored tile become accents instead of dominant...

oh yeah, we're going to drive him nuts too before this is over. So far though, he shows no signs of cracking.... except he did look a little bit like he wanted to stab me with a tile shard when I brought out the camera. Ah, who can blame him?

Stay tuned for more episodes from "As the Pile Diminishes".....

Really Big Delivery From Santa

That's right, it's a mountain of Madix grocery shelving!!














Oooh! It's a whole bunch of other stuff!!!














Even more shelves!



















Look! Checkstands waiting in line instead of people in line at the checkstand!


















The counters of the checkstands are made of a green product called "Forbo Marmoleum"
http://www.themarmoleumstore.com/

Love it.

Floor Show

For some reason, the nearly finished floor is hard to photograph, it is a combination of shiny glare and dampening dust... in some ways, we won't really be able to see it until they day we clean it up for opening. This is a view looking out the Community Kitchen windows. The floor is not wet, and the shiny finish contrasted with the textured sail shapes is pretty dramatic in this light.















Here is a view looking down on the texture. You can see more of the color here.






























This is really hard to see due to dust tracking, but this is a stenciled detail just outside the deli area.














This is a view looking towards the future sandwich bar! You can see sail texture in the lower right, and the brushed texture of the finish.




















The sand-plasted plasma shapes in the NBC floor are crazy cool.


















































You know, I was really hoping those little white orbs were benevolent spirits, but I am starting to think I just have a crappy camera....

Color in Motion

To view a slideshow or download pix:

Westside Evolution