Winery Construction Day 1--Beginning With a Bang

My darling wife will tell you that I've been a little bit on edge the past couple of weeks.  The reason for this anxiety has been I've been waiting for final approval of the basement winery building permit.  Even though I had thought that my discussions with the folks up at town hall last fall had identified all the issues and concerns, it turns out that a few more had cropped up in the interim.  Needless to say the building permit approval process took a little longer while I dealt with the new stuff, but the permit was finally approved last Friday.  Construction was ready to begin!

Mother Nature had a little something to say over the weekend with the arrival of 3-4 inches of wet heavy snow on Sunday afternoon which required a little shoveling to clear the driveway & a path to the basement door for the contractors.  Does no one want this project to begin???

After a final shoveling, Monday morning began with the arrival of a Concord Lumber truck carrying a load of wood studs and other boards.  It was quite amazing to watch the crane operator deftly lift, twist, and dodge his loads past the house-roof and under the power lines to deposit them as close to the basement door as possible.  Eric, our head carpenter from Custom Contracting, Inc, was on hand to get started.  First job was to move the wood out of the snow and into the basement.  I pitched in and helped Eric man-handle the plywood and studs into the basement.  I had new respect for Eric since I think my arms stretched about 2-3 inches while we were moving the wood..  Fortunately by the time we got the big stack of studs transferred, another contractor arrived so I retired to the house, completely knackered.

After that, the afternoon passed with quite a bit of racket emanating from the basement.  Lots of prep work before walls can really start appearing, but the wall between the new bedroom and storage room was framed.  The rest of the winery space is still wide open for now, but we're poised to start really moving soon.  Photos below are essentially the starting point of the project (plus some stacks of wood).

Cheers!
Noel