This Instructable will walk you through the process of designing and building a BBQ themed restaurant with a VERY small budget. We relied on our own ingenuity, our scrounging ability and our creativity to make a restaurant that looked like we had spent a fortune, when in fact we did not. The secondary goal of this project was to keep as much out of landfill as possible, as construction is one of the leading producers of landfill waste, we re-used, re-purposed, recycled and bartered our way through this project.
As this was a very large project I cannot capture everything that we did in this one Instructable, but my goal is to give you a glimpse into what is possible with a little creativity and I hope it will inspire you, not necessarily in building a restaurant, but maybe for your regular home improvement projects as well.
Background...
My best friend and her business partner have owned a martini lounge in Toronto, Canada for 10 years but it was time to reinvent the space with a new idea and fresh energy. The surrounding area which once was a haven for the homeless and the street lined with shelters & soup kitchens had given way to a condo boom with tens of thousands of young professionals and families now living in the neighborhood. The dark hidden away lounge needed a transformation...
The owner, having spent much time in Austin Texas visiting her mother, fell in love with the BBQ culture and the casualness of the Texas "BBQ joint". She wanted to bring that feel and atmosphere back home to Toronto so the planning began in the spring of 2012 to convert this old martini lounge into a Texas inspired BBQ joint.
This instructable will cover some of the major projects:
The work was mainily accomplished by the two owners and myself. None of us are in the renovationion business (they own a restaurant, I am a manager at an IT firm) but we each had the vision to make this work. Of course we did bring in a licencend plumber and a licenced electrician to handle those specialized tasks but everything else was done by us (and a few friends) over the span of 8 weeks.
and so it began...
As this was a very large project I cannot capture everything that we did in this one Instructable, but my goal is to give you a glimpse into what is possible with a little creativity and I hope it will inspire you, not necessarily in building a restaurant, but maybe for your regular home improvement projects as well.
Background...
My best friend and her business partner have owned a martini lounge in Toronto, Canada for 10 years but it was time to reinvent the space with a new idea and fresh energy. The surrounding area which once was a haven for the homeless and the street lined with shelters & soup kitchens had given way to a condo boom with tens of thousands of young professionals and families now living in the neighborhood. The dark hidden away lounge needed a transformation...
The owner, having spent much time in Austin Texas visiting her mother, fell in love with the BBQ culture and the casualness of the Texas "BBQ joint". She wanted to bring that feel and atmosphere back home to Toronto so the planning began in the spring of 2012 to convert this old martini lounge into a Texas inspired BBQ joint.
This instructable will cover some of the major projects:
- Re-use of Free Wood Pallets for the walls
- Tables made from Pallet "ends", left over boards & Gas Pipe Legs
- Sheet Metal covered Bar
- Reclaimed Vintage Neon Bar Sign
- Reupholstered "Tufted" Booths
- and much more...
The work was mainily accomplished by the two owners and myself. None of us are in the renovationion business (they own a restaurant, I am a manager at an IT firm) but we each had the vision to make this work. Of course we did bring in a licencend plumber and a licenced electrician to handle those specialized tasks but everything else was done by us (and a few friends) over the span of 8 weeks.
and so it began...
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Signing UpStep 1: The Old Space...
Above is a drawing of the space we had to work with. There were two partition walls built to define an entrance hallway of the martini lounge along with a horseshoe shaped bar at the back of the space. On the east wall there were three built in booths with bench seating along most of the west wall.
On the west side of the space there are a series of 6 supporting posts that were in a line dividing the space into an area approximately 2/3 & 1/3. These could not be moved as they are supporting beams for the apartments above. Also because of these apartments, when the lounge was originally built a "hanging insulated drywall drop ceiling" was installed for sound dampening. This ceiling was hung about 2 ft below the actual ceiling on wire hooks, meaning that there could not be anything directly attached to the existing ceiling.
The lounge was painted mostly black in the last two years of its existence as you will notice in the demolition photos in the next step (the pictures above here were taken several years ago when it was painted blue / gray).
On the west side of the space there are a series of 6 supporting posts that were in a line dividing the space into an area approximately 2/3 & 1/3. These could not be moved as they are supporting beams for the apartments above. Also because of these apartments, when the lounge was originally built a "hanging insulated drywall drop ceiling" was installed for sound dampening. This ceiling was hung about 2 ft below the actual ceiling on wire hooks, meaning that there could not be anything directly attached to the existing ceiling.
The lounge was painted mostly black in the last two years of its existence as you will notice in the demolition photos in the next step (the pictures above here were taken several years ago when it was painted blue / gray).
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I love the rustic look to the wood, although to make the walls easier to clad I may prepare the sides of wood on router table.
The goal here is to have a comfortable bar that serves "common guy" too many premium or imported beers or even uniquely strange local craft beers is not what their idea of a "BBQ Joint" should be. But that may change if their is a demand for having something different.
They hand slice the whole brisket to order and everything is done with dry rub no sauce, with the custormer getting a small squeeze bottle of sauce with their order to apply as they feel fit.
They only have 5 items on the menu, but they do them well...
Depending on how much square feet you need it woul dbe best to hand pick the pallets we just got a truck full and only 1 in 10 pallets were usable. There was some amazing hardwood and redwood ones mixed in where the wood was amazing.
The width of the wire fit exactly between the two pillars. Just stapled it on as we rolled it to the roof.. We now have wine filling those shelves..
To make it worse, most pallet wood is rough sawn, creating great homes and food for all sorts of deadly bacteria. Then, there are the open joints between the slats That allow larger critters to get behind and live and procreate en masse.
Of course I am assuming the planks were not effectively cleaned, and the wood surface would have been left rough, because if you had cleaned all that stuff up, you would certainly have mentioned it.
All supermarkets have ALL of their food delivered to them on pallets. If the pallet board that we used is dangerous on the walls then all food in a supermarket is dangerous and anyone who works in a warehouse or drives a transport truck is at even greater risk because they handle pallets every day.
Further, that wood shows no evidence of exposure to the elements long enough for chemicals to leach out. Still, exposure to the outdoors brings it's own brand of toxins, such as animal feces, vermin, and algae.
Based on the attitude of your response, I am certain that your "sealing" method is inadequate to provide any level of protection. Also, you never indicated that the business was ever inspected by any authority having jurisdiction.
If you anyone plans to install any sort of housed material in the vicinity of food, human contact, or breathing, it cannot br overemphasized to implement proper cleaning methods and to have the cleaned product inspected by a qualified lab.
Wood at lumber yards is usually stored in open buildings with birds, rats, bugs and other animals able to enter. The reason the pallet wood we used, that you say "shows no evidence of exposure", is because we cleaned and sanded it. These were free pallets from a local food distribution warehouse. These were used to ship food many times and then were damaged and put aside. We aquired over 130 pallets from him and got the wood from only selected pallets, discarding ones with signs of rot etc. No businessman is going to give away that many "new" pallets for free. These showed many repairs (extra nails, replaced boards, etc). I will take it as a compliment of the quality of our cleaning work that you thought that they showed no evidence of exposure.
What about the many restaurants use "Barn Board"? which is taken off barns that housed livestock, stored farm chemicals, was painted with lead paint, had dirt floors etc, etc. and is used on interiors without being sealedso that they can keep the natural "patina".
We went over and above what was needed to make sure this was safe. The table tops were made from new pine only the edging was done from Hardwood pallets which were sanded and sealed and that only forms a 1.5 inch band around the tables that could potentailly "contact" the food... The rest of the pallet wood was used on walls above the booths, and in two areas where in total there are only a couple of tables against these walls.
And Yes the local Health inspector and buidling inspector had to inspect the property and renovations before we could open. There is only so much detail that I can include on a project this large.
Despite this we were still careful with the pallets that we used. Any that had a chemical teatment stamp or used pressure treated wood were discarded and also once installed the wood was sealed with 3 coats of varnish. The wood used on the table frames was all "hardwood" which in our research does not get the same treatment as softer woods. Even still we sealed that wood with multiple coats of varnish so there is no contact between bare wood and food.