I worked from 8am to midnight, so I got quite a bit accomplished, including the following:
- Moved a bunch of broken equipment out of the building.
- Set up the recycleables area, and moved the cases of pop and juice to a proper storage section.
- Built a bit more shelving for the kitchen.
- Bolted the server's safe to the floor.
- Built a display rack behind the bar for the older "display only" wine bottles.
- Pulled more equipment out of the old restaurant.
- Washed about forty loads of glassware and put it all away.
- Did some vacuuming, cleaning, and scrubbing in the kitchen.
Jamie Weeks and Terry Geddes also showed up to work on the plumbing project for the landlord. However, I mentioned to them that the dishwasher still wasn't draining, and asked them to look at the grease trap while they were here, since that's part of the landlord's territory. We didn't have a grease trap in our old kitchen, because we don't deep-fry any of our menu items, so opening the trap was an interesting new experience. Basically, a grease trap is a structure which is a couple feet across, and it acts as sort of a filter so that a lot of the grease coming out of the dish pit gets stopped in the trap rather than running through the entire sewer system of the building. The grease trap is accessible right in the middle of the kitchen floor, so it is far easier to clean that out on a regular basis than to try to rip up plumbing in the basement or walls, if that became plugged instead.
The problem with our grease trap was that it probably had not been cleaned out since Pizza Delight had a restaurant here, about six or seven years ago. It certainly didn't look like it had been cleaned when Remy's Bistro was here about three years ago. I would even venture a guess that Remy probably disposed of his old grease from his fryers by pouring it down the kitchen sink drains. And since the trap hadn't been cleaned in several years at least, it was not in good shape. The grease in it had sat and coagulated for years, and it was truly disgusting. We could smell it standing outside of the restaurant, and I thought I would have to go buy bandanas for everyone to cover their faces. Jamie & Terry fought with it for most of the day, up to their elbows in the mess, and hauled out about 10 or 12 gallons of slop. I truly don't know how they managed to get it clean eventually. The photo that I have of Terry (below) was taken late in the afternoon, when most of the hard work had already been done, and after going through multiple pairs of gloves and cleaning up again.
So I have a very well-deserved endorsement for these guys ... if you ever need any plumbing done in the Sackville or Moncton areas, and you're looking for hard workers at a reasonable rate, give these guys a call. Their company is called Roof Edge Construction, and they do bathroom renovations, roofing, windows, decks, siding, and several other types of carpentry and plumbing. I highly recommend these guys.
