Penguin Bookshop

Thank You to Dollar Bank

If you have walked by the back of the Penguin lately, you will see a huge blue tarp over the second floor. The elevator shaft to the second floor is now completed. Our contractor is tearing down the inner wall of the old Penguin, next to Dollar Bank, today and putting up a new concrete block wall. We had a great meeting with several people from Dollar Bank this morning and they eagerly offered to work with us during this process. This will involve coordinating the separation of their roof and utilities and creating complementary facades. They were responsive to our requests and seemed pleased with our plans. We were also happy to find out that they will be giving their Sewickley branch a facelift soon.

On another note, our contractor is going back in for a couple more stents in his heart tomorrow and insists that he will be back on the job by Friday afternoon. He is certainly not going to let any grass grow and we continue to be grateful for his diligence on this project. He an his crews have made every effort to minimize the disruption to people in Sewickley Village by working a lot of evening and weekend hours. 

Roof's Gone!

If you have walked by the back of the Penguin lately you have seen that the roof is gone.  The original first floor was only in the front half of the building.  The new design expands the second floor to the full length of the building and the new elevator shaft (see the next picture) is in the new part.  The old roof was in the way and had to go! 

The Elevator is Going Up

This is a shot of the new elevator.   The photographer is standing in the basement looking up.  You can see the door openings for the basement and the new first floor. 

The RE-Construction Begins

Our primary contractor is back on the job (yes his heart attack was a week ago Monday) while he insists he is feeling fine and ready to work, we have been encouraging him to delegate the heavy lifting.  Below are posted three pictures we took over the past week.  It doesn't even look like the same place.  Walk by the front window when you get a chance before the window is gone too!  This week marks the beginning of the re-construction with the pouring of the new footers.

We have been thrilled with the tolerance of our neighbors during all of this.  We have had absolutely no complaints and the work trudges on.   

Basement Excavation

The basement was excavated down a little below the original building footers so that we could add more support and lower the first floor.  The new footers are being poured this week.

Pile Ready for Recycling

As part of our LEED certification, we have had to recycle as much of the old bookshop furnishings and building material as possible.  Below is one of many stacks organized by material that were sent out for recycling.

First Floor Demolition

Here is a view of the first floor looking toward the back of the store.  All of this material was organized into stacks and as much as possible was sent out for recycling.  Our construction team had its work cut out for itself!  Even though this picture was just taken last week, the room is completely emptied out and the back door on the left now opens up to a pit to the basement.