We are at the point where the things that are being accomplished are less than obvious because we are fine tuning the machine.
The retail humidor is complete and is absolutely beautiful.
Dave Graven spent the week trimming the windows and doors, inside with raw Spanish cedar and outside with poplar which John Henry started painting today. The retail humidor is ready to receive cigars.
Bob Miller, Dave Graven and Dave Kervorkian worked on the storage humidor in the basement this week. Two days and we will be finished with that project. The storage humidor will look better than many retail humidors but it is only for full boxes of cigars. This additional space will enable us to buy when the price is right.
Although the storage humidor was not built with the architectural detail of the retail humidor, the function is identical, with the same humidifier and temperature and humidity monitoring.
We have both humidors wired with sensors that monitor both temperature and humidity and send that data to our computers. The software records those data points every two seconds and can be set to warn us if either parameter ever exceed certain limits. Of course, the old standby of 70F and 70% humidity are our goals. Cigar stock is not cheap and it is critical that we know what is going on at all times.
Along those lines, our security camera system was completed this week. The entire building is monitored by cameras, some obvious to the eye, some not so much. One of the tenets that we believe in is customer safety. The outside parking lot in the rear will have these cameras and coupled with the interior monitors will record everything that goes on. If the need ever arises, we can access this recorded video. We, obviously, hope the need never arises.
From day "One" we have made a commitment to ourselves that we want to keep the flair of the original Rupp General Store. Along those lines, we found an old photo in the Waterville Historical archives of the interior of the store depicting the Rupp brothers inside their store. The photo was roughly 3" X 4" and of very poor quality; bent and damaged. We simply took a photo of the old photo with an iPhone with hopes that something could be done with it. The file was 2.3 meg, but with the help of some photo resizing software that we have we were able to increase the size to a 1.5 gig file that printed out to be a 120" X 82" mural.
Dyno Dave, out of Neapolis, Ohio and his men came out today and installed that mural. Arriving in three sections it was applied to the wall with a heat gun. The result was better than we could have expected. In a few days it will adhere to the surface of the wall and look like a painting.
Dyno Dave, out of Neapolis, Ohio and his men came out today and installed that mural. Arriving in three sections it was applied to the wall with a heat gun. The result was better than we could have expected. In a few days it will adhere to the surface of the wall and look like a painting.
Our plan is to build a frame around the mural so that it will, in fact, appear to look like an old painting and, therefore, finish it off the way it should properly be finished -- respectfully.
This week, the base board trim will be installed. Randy Hardy was busy this past week priming and painting said trim -- thanks, Randy.
The Point of Sale counter will be delivered (albeit two weeks late) and installed as well as the center display counter for the retail humidor. The same goes for the track lighting fixtures for the retail store.
We took the paper off the windows today and raised the levelors. It got so busy with interested passersby that Rich Restivo was, for a time, giving guided tours.
It is time to let folks know what is going on inside...
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