Love

There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when pieces start falling into place – it could be finding the perfect colour for a wall, the fabric that will tie the whole room together, or the tile that will make a space sing. Or, it could be seeing the sign that will make the entire project make sense in your head. Literally. It is totally like that feeling of excitement you get when you have a crush or you start to fall in love. On Thursday last week, I fell in love with a little pig and then everything clicked from that moment on. My day started with a meeting at Jason‘s office. Sefi and I went to check on his progress and that is when we met pig:

We then watched as Jason added the screen printed cut lines. The screen printing process is lots of fun to watch happen and especially watching a pro like Jason work. He is so confident, so creative, so excited by the work he does. It is contagious being around him. You would have to be dead inside to not feel it.

The result:

Great! Not too Victorian, not too trendy, looking like a tattoo kind of. Just perfect.

Once he’s done it will look like this:

Pig will be swinging in the wind, greeting our customers, right outside the shop. And Pig will not only be our signage/address, he’ll also be made into a stamp and we’ll be able to use him as part of the Boucherie brand and merchandise -maybe on tote bags, maybe on tags. Pig everywhere!

Jason then showed us a framed version of our Lawrence wallpaper and boy does it look sweet. In his generosity, he offered to give it to us to hang in the space. I had wanted to wallpaper the bathroom at the shop but the ceilings are low in the basement and we opted to paint for now. Still, I was bummed that the wallpaper wouldn’t be there. Now it can be, in a small way. I love how it will tie into the restaurant. Maybe it’ll go over the lunch counter on the brick wall side? Maybe in the bathroom? Either way, we’ll find a spot for it. It’s like family somehow – those faces have become so familiar in the last couple of years, I can’t imagine them not following us over to the shop in some way…

After that meeting we went to meet the other J in our life, Jacob Logel. He is an ironworker/designer and man about town who built the table I designed for the restaurant:

We thought it would be smart to bring him in and see what he could do with the sandwich counter. The wrap around window was always the main problem with the u-shaped counter that I wanted. It meant having to add a pole in the corner and trying to find a way to attach the different sections.

Obviously we could attach on the brick side, but what to do on the glass? We met with Jacob and he gave us the key. He just so happened to have one 12′ piece of stainless steel counter that he had taken from a restaurant that was closing down. He offered to sell it to us. And it was exactly the right thing.

We went to his shop and for the second time that morning I fell in love a little. It would fit perfectly along the window. But then how do you solve the other two counters that make up the U or C shape? Having counter like that made, in steel, would be our whole budget. Actually exceed our budget by a lot. And then I thought back to our original idea for the counter: something to resemble our bavarian beer garden table at Lawrence (again!).

And Jacob said he could make it for us no problem. How do you tie it all together, though? By having the stainless steel and the wood counters on either side of it, all have the same painted steel legs:

And it all clicked a little more into place. It would now have to be three independent counter pieces with similar hardware.

Jacob, his steel, sketching and the one quirk to the counter – a little hole.

After our visit with Jacob, we decided to head over to the lumber-yard and pick up two 83″ pieces of wood to use as the side counters. I had gone there the week before thinking that maybe maple could work with the large maple butcher block table. I hadn’t found any maple that was the right size or width but there was this rounded pine:

Once I fell for the stainless steel, the thought of bringing in any kind of wood on either side of it didn’t work. But painted wood could be an option. Maybe painted in the Onyx of our mouldings? Pieces clicked into place completely. Stainless steel counter piece along the front windows with three beer garden table-like legs, two side counters in a painted wood with the same legs for the side that is on the right against the other window, and brackets painted the same colour as our legs for the brick side. I especially wanted to avoid the heaviness of most bars – this is as close to floating as I could get.