Progress Summary 2001

As with all things in construction...timelines never go exactly the way you expect. 

We completed the new kitchen, installing all new equipment and a new 14ft hood & fire suppression system. We now have a 3 ft grill, a 3 ft char broiler, salamander, 10 burner Garland range with double ovens, a steamer, convection oven, cook & hold double oven, 2 sandwich units, a large custom steam table, an 8x10 walk in cooler, 2 freezers, a dishwasher that turns over a load every 90 seconds, a prep area, ice machine, shelving and lots and lots of gadgets. We're really cookin' now! Additionally, we built 8 taps into the wall at the bar and brought in some really stupendous regional and local beers, most of which aren't any tap anywhere in the tri county area. 

We painted all summer and fall (2001) this year while customers dined on the porches and watched our 60 ft boom truck (aka: the cherry picker) zoom up to the 4th floor gables. The entire front & porches were painted white. What a difference it made...the place literally glows now. A marked Main St improvement. Passonno Paints love us for buying over 350 gallons. Someday, we'll get the back painted too. 

The big change and success was the restoration of the Howland House wing & rebuilding of its front porches along Main St. This is the new shops' location. The porches had been demolished decades ago. Although we started the foundational work on the building last year (2000) it wasn't finished until 2001. We decided to replace almost all of the foundation walls. We had a major set back when we started jacking the building back up. Walls weren't moving where they should have...so we wound up gutting all the lath & plaster (we were trying to save it) on the main floor of the shops to see why. We discovered that sometime between 1913 and 1930 when they renovated, the construction crew removed all the main bearing walls and support beams. What morons! It was downright terrifying and we immediately braced all the floors, setting up hemlock posts. It set us back several months. We completely rebuilt all structural bearing walls that had been removed, replaced all the beams and gutted the 2nd floor to be sure everything was supported correctly. The Howland House wing is now relatively straight and definitely sound. It had dropped about 2 ft over the years...pretty substantial. We refinished all the floors, which turned out to be old growth fir that they had laid over the original wide board pine. We fixed the old windows and bought new storm & screens for them. The walls were sheet rocked and painted in golden tones. The trim and wainscoting was reinstalled and painted white. Doors were kept in their original (1913) frames and places with their transom lights. The bathroom is ADA accessible, of course. We installed new state of the art boiler and hot water floorboard heating units, as well as new wiring and plumbing. The 5 shops are lovely & bright, lots of windows. Each has track lighting. The halls have 5 antique chandeliers, 4 of which came from the upstairs rooms in the Roseboro. The main entrance chandelier was purchased through Ebay online auctions...my favorite source of needed items. The new shops have their own entrance staircase off the porch, which matches the front steps & porches of the Roseboro, with globed light posts. We also installed a decorative period lamp post at the end of the new handicap ramp along the south end of the new porch. Although we were hoping to open the shops summer 2001, in lieu of the project size and surprises, it was reasonable that we wouldn't be ready until the fall. And of course, that horrific infamous day of September 11 had us all reeling. We found it too difficult to work. People found it too difficult to go out. We stopped work for the remainder of the year on the shops.

All in all, we had a great first real season. We learned quite a bit about the restaurant business. Had more articles written about the Roseboro,  the village and the renaissance that's well on its way. And, our best friends, Doug & Garth, opened the American Hotel in 2001, making it an exceptional year for Sharon Springs.