Work continues on the Hazelnut Inn. From the outside things look quiet but inside talented tradesmen are working their magic. Electricians are busy pulling wires through conduits in the North Star suite. Once this work is done we will resume the theme work there to finish the suite. Underneath the North Star is the maintenance/support room which houses all of the technical components of the Inn. There the gas fitter was busy doing the final hookups. This room is also the centre of all of the plumbing for the structure. To carry out this complex task we hired the same fellow who installed a smaller, but similar system in our house ten years ago. This handles the domestic and hot water for heat. Sean is one of those craftsmen who takes great pride in his work. Everything is planned, square and neat, and the solder joints are perfect. This attention to detail gives us great confidence in how it will function for decades to come. The system is massive for a three-room hotel but should three guests each decide to fill their giant soaker tub at the same time there will be ample hot water. The same exquisite attention we are applying to every square inch of the Hazelnut Inn goes into the inner workings. Inside and out - pure magic!
Each week a little more of the later to be hidden infrastructure of the Hazelnut Inn is completed. This past week it was the fire sprinkler crew who wrangled the necessary pipes. threading them through the trusses, beams, vaults and domes. We had a great crew who were up to the challenge. When we finish our theme work they won’t be noticed by our guests.
It was out goal to make the concrete sidewalk of the Hazelnut Inn not look like a sidewalk but rather a dirt path. We started with a small stoned but regular mix and then once it was troweled flat we tossed various stones onto the surface. Most of the stones were placed near the edges of the walk and then fewer into the middle. The stones were then worked into the surface using a trowel. As a last step Peter scattered pea gravel along the edges. A final trowel finished things off. The next day Peter used a pressure washer to gently remove the top surface of the concrete revealing all of the stones. We’ll let the concrete cure nice and hard and then use some stains to make it look more like the dirt pathway we imagined.
