Strange Butcher Block Top Knot Treatment?

[Leon]

I wonder what code says about a butcher block in a butcher shop. And or if they are even allowed anymore. Seems the plastic boards are more common place these days.

[-MIKE-]

When we first moved in next door to them, after a few months my wife had to kindly ask her stop bringing us so much stuff. We were indeed gaining weight.

She's a world class baker who studied under Julia Child and went to some prestigious culinary school out in SoCal, so it's easy to eat any and all of whatever she brings us.

[-MIKE-]

What's funny is that, from what I read, those plastic boards harbor bacteria much easier than butcher block. And it takes way too much cleaner/bleach/whatever to truly clean them.

Ironically, the previous tenant of their new retail space was a butcher shop called, "The Carnivore Shop." The entire place still smells like smoked meat... in other words, like heaven. :-) Once they seal up the the exhaust pipe from the old smoker, it'll have a chance to smell like a bakery.

[Ed Pawlowski]

sounds like the has the ability. Hope she has the right location and clientele for success. We have one OK bakery around here. Good bread, mediocre pastry. I'd probably become a regular of hers.

[stvlcnc43]

Yep, I agree.

[-MIKE-]

Great location. There's an historical square in Franklin, TN. Lots of tourists and local regulars walking the area all the time. Lots of festivals on the square about every month. Biggest problem is parking and clutter when too many people are there. Her shop is just off the square with parking. So she'll get the tourists and locals.

[-MIKE-]

I agree, too. It is indeed nitpicking. :-p

[dadiOH]

Hey, SOMEBODY has to do it :)

[-MIKE-]

It would be the Wrec room without it!

[Leon]

LOL

[Swingman]

The mantra I sing in those circumstances, to the tune of "You pays your money, you takes your chances", is: "want it to look like (X)wood?" Use (X)wood".

;)

That wide of non nondescript, Asian wood, glued up into a panel may be replaced soon enough anyway.

... that cross grain join have room to move?

[-MIKE-]

Heck no. When he was first looking at these cheap tops to buy, I gave him the whole caveat emptor, I told him that they don't check grain position at those factories or use good species or good pieces of whatever species they do use. I told him they may be cheap, but the ends are going to crack if they haven't already, they're going to warp (cup) if they haven't already, and many of the glue joints may fail. I knew all that because I've been to the closeout store where he got them and I've seen the stacks and looked through them. I told him to cherry pick the "best" one and he did. Even this one had several splits on the ends.

We were going to do a 45degree joint, but that would've eaten up too much length. I said, we can can go with a 90 but we'll probably get some more cracks and he said, "that's ok, it'll match the cracks in the ends." :-) More rustic-ness.

I used pocket screws as clamps, so at the thing will stay together if it splits too much.

[Swingman]

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, but there is a limit ...

Refused to do a return on window trim by butting drywall against a single pane of a row of plate glass windows, this on a roughly $250k remodel.

Client was highly pissed when I refused to do it. But not more pissed as I was at being asked to do something so damned wrong. Told them I could find a carpenter who would do their window return trim, and that they could hire and pay him separately from the main job. They did.

Handled it as a change order, described and annotated so there was a record that it was not part of the original contract.

No doubt in my mind that sometime in the future someone would walk by those windows, see that drywall molded from condensation, clearly visible from outside, and want to know who the GC/builder was?

Screw you ...

[-MIKE-]

Yeah, in this case I'm just helping out a neighbor. They have a dream of a retail bakery shop and I'm happy to help them realize that dream. You reap what you sow. Plenty of folks have helps me out along the way in my life, so I'm happy... overjoyed... to return the favor.

In this Ikea age in which we live, "fine woodworking" is a dying breed, so I'll sow the seeds of friendship and not sweat the quality issues of this build-out. I won't be stenciling my name on the results, but I'll happily exchange the good will for my pride in this case.