The BAF

The Big Ass Fan was installed this week and the boys turned it on. It's a piece of art, as far as industrial ceiling fans go. The point of it is to de-stratify the air in rooms with very high ceilings. It moves very slowly and pulls the warm air down from the ceiling. It's suppose to save us a bundle on our heating bills in the winter. It uses the equivalent energy of a 100W light bulb. Considering it's size, that's pretty efficient.

All the courts are finished. The paint is curing and will be ready to be played on in another day.

We're shooting for occupancy in one week. A few things have to happen in that time, namely getting our plumbing in, staining the concrete floors, installing bleachers, installing the counter tops, finishing the bar like area, and installing the carpet. James from Wyldewood Construction thinks it can happen this coming week. I'll keep you posted.

Still a construction Site

The place is still a construction site, despite being able to play on court one and having a chair to sit on. The Anderson guys will be finished with their work by the end of Wednesday, then we have to wait three days for the paint to dry on the floor lines. I know people are eager to play over there but it's still a construction site.

Finish work is progressing. Slowly. The tile in the restrooms is done, but now we wait for the concrete stain on the floors and then the plumbing fixtures. Maybe this week? The plumbers only want to come one more time to do their install.

Electricians are changing over the power today. That will effectively stop all other work for at least an hour today. Once that's finished we'll be able to turn all the lights on.

They have to build and finish the bar-like area and put in the counter-tops, but again, we're still waiting for some things to show up. Seems we're in waiting mode again. Reminds me of waiting for the concrete to be poured or the dang ceiling to be finished. A lot is going to get done in the next two weeks, but it's still really frustrating to wait.

Recently a friend told me a Buddhist expression that goes something like this: Good at the beginning, good in the middle, good at the end. I'm keeping that in mind as I try to wait patiently and not push the contractors to hurry up.

So, as you may have noticed in my last 3000-word post (since a picture is worth 1000) we did break in the first court. How does it feel, you might ask? Well, I gotta say, it's pretty incredible. I've played on plaster courts before, but probably not with the same amount of attention. I've spent the last 15 years or so playing on the wood courts at the venerable Nielsen Tennis Stadium. While a nice material, the walls have been painted many times so the ball tends to skid a little on the walls. They have recently sanded the floors down to an au natural finish which has been a HUGE improvement in predictable ball behavior, but still the ball will skid on the walls a bit.

Panel wall courts tend to be very loud and echoey, and the ball loses all it's texture within about 30 minutes so it just skids like crazy all over the place.

ASB courts are another sort of panel option, but the walls are seamless and filled with sand so that they have a very solid feel to them and a true bounce. There is some sort of paint on the walls with a little texture so balls bounce true and don't skid on the walls. A very nice court.

Which brings us to plaster. When Pete the Plasterer first finished a wall, I was pretty amazed at how glass-smooth the plaster is. From experience, I know that the balls don't skid on plaster, but I'm looking at this stuff thinking, how could this be? These walls are smooth as glass... Be that as it may, when the ball touches the plaster, the wall seems to grab the ball, slow it down, and kick it out into the middle of the court. I said a while ago in a post how good straight walls reward good play. You could also say, that they punish poor play. With sticky plaster walls, if you hit a ball that strikes the side wall at any angle at all, it's going to come out into the center of the court. That's not good.

A number of times over the last few days, I've hit what I thought was going to be fairly decent length, only to be a bit surprised that when my ball hit the side wall maybe a little short, then slowed down drastically and came off the wall so my opponent had all sorts of time to send me flailing away into a far corner. It's quite dramatic and will take getting used to.

Now that said, when you do hit good length that stays tight against the wall and you force a weak return, boy can punish the meatball that comes out into the middle of the court. It's brilliant, and that's what we mean by a court rewarding you for good play.

Anyway, the courts are great. They rank up there with the nicest I've played on. The floors are beautifully sprung, the lighting is excellent, and the sound of the ball striking the head wall is flat out brilliant. So satisfying.

Now if we can only get the rest of the contractors out of the place... Nice guys and all, but I'm ready for you to go!

Christening

Court 1

Court 1 is about finished. They were installing glass on Sunday, the line on the front wall, and the tin. They need to sand the floor, then paint the line. Probably do that tomorrow. They had to wait around a bit today because one of the other workers was creating a bit of dust and they didn't want to silicone the glass or paint the line because it would get all dusty. Anyway, after they pain the line it'll be a good 3 days for the paint to cure. Agonizing wait, to be sure.

In the mean time, they put up the net between courts one and two and began working on the sleepers for court two. They'll start getting those down tomorrow and maybe get some subfloor down as well.

Outside the court area, the Wyldewood boys put up the lyptus wall and it looks fantastic. Our lockers arrived as well and they installed those on Friday. Tile in the women's room is finished and they'll move on to the men's room this week.



We're still hung up a little bit with our electric. The guys have been operating on temporary power so the only lights that actually work are the lights over the courts. Electric One has to shut down power to the building for an hour or so to make some big changes, but then everything should work. I'm looking forward to it because most of the lighting is in and it'll be great see stuff actually work.

This power delay is becoming a bit of a problem too because apparently the floor sanding equipment uses some serious juice so they can't plug the sander into the temporary power supply. Jordan was a bit down in the mouth today because he wanted to get after that (among other things) but had to resort to working on the court sleepers. Dude, I feel your pain. I've been waiting on various aspects of this project since September.

Flooring

The Anderson guys are really busting ass now. The plaster is done on two courts, and the flooring is pretty near finished on the first. After plastering, the guys worked on the flooring of court one. It's a pretty cool process. You may remember when we had the concrete floor put in, the concrete guys were told they have to be level within 1/8 inch over a 10 foot area. They did a pretty good job of it, but there are still some high and low spots.

The first thing the court guys do is shoot a grid of the entire court area. They put little dots every thirty inches and take a measurement on each dot to see how close they are to level. Each dot is assigned a measurement--0, 1, 2, or 3--which correspond with a certain thickness of rubber pad and shim.



After they get all the rubber pads figured out, they nail them to a section of wood and create a big lattice of wood on the floor, and then finally top it off with the top-grade maple, sand it with 40 grit paper to get a nice nap, paint the lines and we're good to go.

It's not the best description, but the point is, it's very time consuming, but the end result is a level floor that's nicely sprung.

Anyway, things are moving along really well with the courts. Apparently, our singer, Jordan, is hoping to be done with this job well in time for Valentine's day so he can head back to New York and to be with his sweetie. Isn't that nice?



Outside the courts, James, PJ and the Wyldewood crew are making great progress with the tiling, painting, and bar-like area behind the courts.

Plaster

Two walls down. Ten to go.

Cool colors, eh? These are not your old man's squash courts.

By the way, that is not me singing in the background. It's Jordon, one of the Anderson Court guys. He'll be mortified to find out that I captured the dulcet tones of his voice.

Home Stretch

I was away for a few days and haven't seen the progress since last Wednesday. I walked in this morning and my jaw about hit the floor. All the lighting over the courts is up and on and it's SOOO bright. Almost all the painting is done and the colors looks fantastic--thanks to Alyssa at Destree Design Architects for her good color sense!

The crew from Anderson Courts arrived on Monday and began shooting a grid on the floors. The plasterer from England arrived today and they begin doing walls tomorrow. They will start and finish one wall per day. It's a wet-on-wet plaster technique that is a very labor intensive and very fast. Once they finish one layer, they start with the next layer directly on top of the previous layer while it's still wet. According to their specs, they use 4 to 5 layers of plaster. Anyway, the head plasterer used to do two walls per day, but he's getting on in years and only does one per day now. After they finish the walls, it'll take the guys about two days to install the flooring, then another day to install the glass wall and paint the lines on the floor.



Away from the courts, some finish work has begun on the bathrooms. Some tile has gone in the showers and the primer/texture is on the walls as well. The tile is really beautiful stuff and we're happy to say is a green product as well. It's some sort of Engineered Stone that is produced with minimal environmental impact. I'll get the name of it and post a link later. In any case, it's really pretty.