MUD Story

Gosia and I, a couple of years before the MUD project started (photo by Don Getsug)

Chapter 1 (Mud's conception)

Actually the MUD was conceived while on my way out the door, on a cold, fall day in November of 2002, a little over three years ago.
I was walking out to take care of some business and my separated then wife, (now my partner in business as well as the best friend, Gosia) asked me, in not so many words, what my plan “B” was?. I told her that I was going to open a Cafe. I have mentioned this to her before, on several occasions, however she never took me seriously. This time she stopped me from stepping out, and asked what was I going to do about my plan. I explained to her that I would do some research, obtain the loan and start simultaneously searching for location, location and than some more search for location. Later, I would design, construct, and furnish a place, and then open it within three to six months (what a naive thought this was!).
For the first time, this autumn day, Gosia took me seriously, after almost two years of knowing about it. I left my apartment about three minutes later, and treated the whole concept like another little idea to toy with while driving.
Well, I didn't know it at this point yet, but opening MUD, wasn't just a "little idea to toy with" anymore, it was much, much more, and it was easier said than done.
Everything took almost ten times longer than originally planned and cost about three to four times more than anticipated. After a while, I was totally "sucked in" into this project, and there was no way out. The MUD became a friendly "quick sand" for me...
Research on the place took about two month. Of course I wasn’t sitting glued to the computer screen reading page after page about the importance of milk temperature to the process of creating a perfect cappuccino, or how to deal with a brilliant but temperamental plumber that is willing to do the job for the sake of the art of plumbing. Ah no, this wasn’t exactly the case. I only did a research on a handful of occasions and than chewed on the printed material for a few weeks, Than I stopped and digested all of it for another two and came back to the research again, since by then I had completely forgotten everything I learned before.
Search for location started almost immediately after research was in it’s full swing. So did the loan research and writing a proposal. Mud name didn’t exist then, since I wanted to tailor the place to it’s location completely, including the name of the business. At that point I had a work-name for it: “Studio Cafe”. Pretty dull and boring, however, I thought this was a good name for all my presentations. I even created a simple logo that went on all the materials etc. This provided me with a serious corporate look, and actually by itself already informed, in a most part, what the place was going to do.
We decided to do both ad, and on-location, location research, meaning reading classifieds in all local newspapers and driving around the neighbourhoods that would fit our purpose.
First area we covered this sunny early winter day, when actual search had begun, was Loyola University, and Northwestern University campuses. At that time we both lived in East Rogers park and we really wanted to find something close by, mostly for convenience purposes. There was nothing around Loyola University campus that really hit the note, we still managed to harvest a several phone numbers of different places for rent (most of them never called us back). After searching around Loyola campus for about hour and a half, we left for Evanston. It was late afternoon.
We drove to the very entrance of the Northwestern University campus, right at the curve of Sheridan Road, and started from there. First we decided to drive to the next intersection and turn west until we hit some possibility. None of us knew this area at all. This was a first time for both of us to visit other than downtown Evanston. We passed three blocks and found the little group of buildings with storefronts around the Foster “L” station. Two of them were available for rent. One directly east of tracks and one west, across the parking lot. The last one looked very good, it had a good "feel" to it, with it's wide windows and specious interior. I took the phone number from “For Rent” sign and called immediately. Some older lady spoke through the voice mail message, and after listening to it, I felt like there were some very good vibrations about her as well.
Next day her husband, Roy Holmes (god bless his soul) called me back, and we set the appointment for me to see the space...

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first work-name and logo

Cafe MUD temporary "working" logo used for all the proposals and on our first stationary.

Chapter 2 (Location, location, location)

We visited the place a couple of days later. Roy who showed it to us, volunteered for a church that owned the property. He was a very friendly and personable guy. We had a few laughs and meeting him was a great experience. There were three storefronts available at this address. They were all connected since this used to be the Lindo Mexico, a Mexican restaurant, which had been closed for two years. Roy mentioned that the landlord will divide the space to our needs.
At first, Gosia and I looked at the south end storefront. It was long and size of it seemed like it would fit our needs the best. There were a few parking spots for the business as well. We really liked this one a lot. Roy said that all we need to do is to write a proposal, a letter describing the intended use, and a business plan. At this point we didn’t have any of these yet. This was a time to start working.
During my research I came across a consultant in, I believe, Oregon. Ukrainian descent, coffee expert that consulted some of the biggest coffee house chains in US. He had a three different programs available for people like us. One was just his book and a few hours of phone consultation, which would cost $180, second one was his guide book, the unlimited consultation and on-going assistance with equipment, set up and so on. Third option cost over seven thousand dollars and he would completely assist the creation of the shop, including providing architectural plans, logos, advertising, setting up the equipment, employee training, and hands-on assistance during first week of operation. Due to our very limited budget at this point we decided to go with the first option. I purchased the book that was downloadable on the net, and went with it. Actually this book ended up to be very informative and provided a lot of very useful help, including business plan that just needed a customisation.
I sat down to do the work. Writing a business plan was actually pretty easy, I applied our information and customised it. After it was finished, I arranged it in Adobe Illustrator, added our work-logo, and voila! It proved to be a very useful format, also later, when we actually applied for a business loan.
I also found another book on the subject that seemed like it could be helpfull at the moment, it cost only $17 and was available online. I bought that one as well, it wasn’t as good as the first one, but it provided some other information about things like: the construction process, dealing with subcontractors, advertising etc, which the first one didn’t have. Few days after meeting with Roy, we had all the pieces he needed from us, (see the copy of original proposal letter below).
Roy was very impressed with our presentation, and seemed to be quite reassuring about the whole business of us getting the place. We were very happy with the progress. However, I haven’t heard from him for a good several weeks after that. Every time I called him he would say that the meeting of the board that was supposed to decide haven’t happened yet. After another couple of weeks, Roy called me in the morning and said: “I have good and bad news for you. Bad news is that the south storefront, you wanted, is off limits. The good news is that if you decide to take the north one it is as good as yours.” I told him that I will think about it and let him know in a few days. Next week or so was pretty agonising for us. I decided that I want to take the space Roy suggested, Gosia, on the other hand, was totally against it, she didn’t like the feel of it, she didn't like the shape of it and several other things. A few days later I called Roy and told him that we wanted to take another look at the northern end of the building.
In the meantime, I went to my bank to talk to the loan officer. He happened to be Polish and spoke that language fluently. This somewhat helped us communicating and, when I left his office, I was under the impression that getting this loan was just a matter of formality. It was an exciting point and I felt like our coffee shop project was finally on it’s way. Well, it wasn't.
After I gave some thought to the new location, I actually liked it even more than the first one. There were some very good points to it. First, there was whole infrastructure in there, left from the restaurant, which was available to us. There was a walk-in cooler, a very expensive luxury, there was a commercial dish-washer in the kitchen, ice-maker, large water boiler, airconditioning, heating and even a three compartment stainless sink as well. Another good point was a full basement underneath that the other space didn't have. It also had a large two windows in front, which could be converted to open ones in summer. According to Roy, electrical installation and plumbing were also in place, already customised for restaurant use. Gosia and I argued about this location for days. I couldn’t convince her that there were a good, valid, points to this one as well. Finally she, reluctantly, agreed. We were ready to go again.

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the first proposal

First proposal using our "working" stationary. This one was presented to obtain loan, lease and other credits.

Chapter3 (The falsehood of hopes)

In April of that year, 2003, I went for a short visit to St. Louis, after I drove, not even, fifty miles away from the City, I received a call from Roy Holmes. He was very happy to let me know that we were very close to getting the place. At this point, he said, we were on the top of the list of possible future tenants. This piece of news made me very happy. I really enjoyed my trip thinking that it was a smooth sailing from this point on. Spring was starting to show around, and farther south I drove, the greener were the trees. St. Louis was much warmer than Chicago. Leaves were already far on their way to summer and it only added to my up-beat spirit. It was a great trip. I met a wonderful people that really liked me, and I couldn’t stop thinking that the project was finally materializing.
Few days later, when I came back to the city, I started to tighten up my floor plans etc. I started to toy with a possible names for the cafe as well. It was a very happy time for us. Spring was around and our dreams were becoming a reality. I stopped by the bank to make sure the loan was secured. Unfortunately my condominium, which I used as a collateral on the loan, was appraised much lower than I thought. The loan officer informed me that I would have to deposit at least twenty thousand dollars as a additional collateral. He also told me that in order to move on with the financing I would need to have a signed lease in place. I started to press Roy to get one. I went back to the building a few times, and made much more exact measurements. Two weeks later I had a finished floor plans. Unfortunately the same story repeated again, we had to wait and wait and wait. There was no final answer about the space and finally almost a month or so later, right before my birthday at the end of May, I found out that the decision was made in favor of somebody else. I was devastated. Space was gone, there were no alternatives and loan wasn’t approved. Suddenly the whole project moved far away.
Gosia and I started to look for another space right away. We drove around the Loyola University campus again, as well as around Northwestern and De Paul Universities. We looked at good eighty to a hundred possible locations around the City. None of them was nearly as good as the one we just lost. Finally we narrowed it down to couple of storefronts. One was on Loyola Avenue, right by the campus. This place had some good points. It used to be a health-food store which went bankrupt. Space was quite nice, had original iron ceiling and old hardwood floors with a lot of personality. There was an exposed brick wall and two large windows in the front. It had basement and rent wasn’t too high. The best feature was the wide sidewalk in front of the place, there was enough room to build a nice out-door cafe. Our hopes were up again. Landlord at this place seemed to like us and he was very positive about being able to rent it. We waited for another two weeks after which I got another piece of bad news, former workers of the store decided to form a partnership and keep the place afloat. Our chances were getting slimmer. Time was running out, so was the money.
In the meantime I hired a lawyer to establish a corporation and look over our interest in general. Of course it cost more than I anticipated as well. Gosia and I went to see him in his downtown office. We went over some basics and he helped us fill out the applications. We also started to look for a location again. One of the options was a place located at so called Lincoln Square. This place didn’t feel good, there were no good vibrations surrounding it. The size was much smaller, than two previous ones we looked at, it didn’t have a basement and rent was very high. Commuting from our apartment wasn’t as easy neither. It took much longer to get there by car, good twenty minutes with no heavy traffic. And by train it would take even longer. The demographics of the place weren’t as good neither, there wasn’t any University in a close proximity and the competition was strong in form of Starbucks within two blocks going one way, and another, well established, coffee shop not even block going in the other direction. There even was a bakery/cafe right next door, fortunately it was closed for a while, well not indefinitely. The only good thing was that the place was located on a curve of high-traffic street and a large, busy public transportation train station near by. I called the agent and left him a message on the voice mail. Day or so later he called. Judging by the voice and the accent, this was an older man and a foreigner. He called when I was at an opening of a theater production of one of my close friends. I ran out of the building to take the phone call. He was very inquisitive as to what I was going to put in this place, and wanted to know about everything starting from my experience, through my financing etc. He also had some doubts about this location, since there were already two coffee shops within a short walking distance. We agreed to meet next day and talk.
When I arrived at his place, I found an overweight man in his late sixties, sitting in a dark, poorly decorated, real estate management office. He let me in and we talked for a while. He was very suspicious but finally agreed on letting me to rent the space. He insisted on leaving him a one month security deposit right then and there. I was so desperate that I did just that. It was hot summer day. I came back home and tried to convince Gosia to the place. Again, it was easier said than done, she didn't like it to begin with, neither did I. Next day we went to take another look at it. The storefront used to be a music store and there still were shelves on the walls. Hardwood floor was in a terrible conditions so was everything else. There were no restrooms, but the landlord promised to fix the floors and put the restrooms in for us. We went home in silence. Gosia hated this location, and so did I, we just didn’t have much choice anymore.

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very first floor plan

Cafe MUD very first floor plan for the present location in Evanston on Maple, based on a "counted steps" measurements (notice the difference in concept, with the bar in front right by the entrance (compare with actual floor plan shown few entries below).

Chapter 4 (This MUD was meant to be here)

At this point we didn't have much choice anymore than to take it. I arranged a few visits to the place and examined it carefully. It had some potential, however the concept of the cafe that I sported from the beginning, would have to be drastically changed. After taking some exact measurements I drew the plans of the place. We were going to put a small stage by one of the front windows to host some live performances. I also started to work on the name and logos for the place. Since the area was called Lincoln Square, I toyed with this concept. One of the names that we were drawn to was "Square Coffee". I came up with some interesting logo concepts as well, (see below in archives). Gosia and I went to the location on a several occasions to count the traffic. We counted the foot-traffic as well as number of cars passing by. It was a busy location, over 30.000 cars passed by each day. Right in front of the place the street had a sharp, ninety degrees, curve and two stop signs, which gave drivers an extra second or two to look around. There was also a big parking lot across the street, which made the place easier to reach.
Gosia was fighting me to the teeth to look for a different location. We went on another scouting trip or two, and I looked through the newspaper ads as well. We found whole bunch of places, none of them really suitable for us. I also had my lawyer look over the lease, which he changed a bit and the tennis match between the landlord's lawyer and out lawyer started. It took a several weeks and finally, early July we were ready to sign our lease. It was kind of against our better judgment, but we were running out of time and money at this point. Both Gosia and I put everything on the line and there was no source of income at this point for neither of us.
Finally the day, we were supposed to sign the lease, came. It was cloudy and gloomy, which didn't help my overall feeling. The meeting was supposed to take place in the afternoon. Around ten in the morning our lawyer called and said: "if I were you, I wouldn't sign that lease". I was shocked, since we worked on it for weeks, and it seemed like everything was "ironed-out" to our advantage. When I pressed him for more specifics, he explained that the lease itself wasn't a problem. The problem was that the building was being purchased by somebody else and the new owner didn't want our coffee shop in there. This meant that in the best case scenario we won't be able to extend our lease for another five years when it expires.
On one hand I was devastated, on the other hand I was relieved, since we had doubts about this place to begin with. The worse part was that we didn't have any alternative location. In about half an hour after the phone call, Gosia and I were back driving and looking for the new location. We found a place near De Paul University, it was kind of good location, but we were scared to even think about how high the rent for this place would be. I took the number and called the landlord, nobody answered so I left a message on the voice mail. Nobody called back that day, well, as a matter of fact, nobody ever called back from this place. We went on to the west side of the city and looked some more. Finally we gave up. On our way back Gosia decided to stop by the store and get some groceries.
When we got back to our neighborhood it was already getting dark. It must have been around eight or eight thirty at night. I dropped Gosia off in the front of the apartment and went to look for parking. Our neighborhood is notorious for being a difficult place to park. That day I drove and drove looking, without any luck. It must have taken me good hour before I found a spot. I still felt lucky. After parking the car, I stayed inside for a while, thinking about the whole situation. I was devastated, the project was over. I knew it would take a miracle for us to be able to take it off the ground at this point. I thought of Gosia and how to talk to her. She was going to be depressed and I couldn't think of anything to tell her to ease her mood. When I was locking up car, my cell phone rang. I picked it up and heard Roy Holmes' voice (the administrator of the place we liked in Evanston). Roy said: "Remember I told you I was going to fight for you?". Yes Roy, I remember, I answered. Then he asked me: "Do you still want the space?" I must have answered before he even finished saying it. YES! YES! YES!. He continued: "Come over tomorrow and meet me at the location at ten in the morning, to go over the details. For most part the place is yours". I asked Roy what happened to the people that wanted to rent the spot. He said that everything was going according to plan until about month before when they stopped answering the phone and he haven't heard from them since then. It was strange, because they all agreed on the details of the lease and it was ready to be signed. He waited for little over the month, and since he didn't have a clue as to what was happening, he gave up. I was ecstatic. I ran home to share the news.
We were so happy! Both of us must have jumped. What a day this was! It started in such a bad way. We went through the yo-yo of emotions, and finally when it looked the worst and I was at the point of asking god for a miracle, it happened! Suddenly it looked like the coffee shop was going to happen. It seemed like this particular location was meant to be ours. We opened a bottle of wine to celebrate, then we talked and talked. I printed out the old floor plans that I made for the place and we went over the details. It was such an exciting time. Few hours later Gosia went to bed, I was still going and couldn't even think of sleeping. That evening I went out to the local bar and got very drunk with some friends. I couldn't believe our luck!

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Square Coffee logos

Logos created for the location on Lincoln Square in Chicago, which we almost leased instead...

Chapter 5 (How our name became MUD! )

Couple of days later I met with Roy Holmes at the location. We looked carefully at everything again. It was a happy day. Place felt like ours, and I had hard time leaving. I measured everything and later that day I drew very exact plans of the place. Roy mentioned that he could give us a copy of the lease that previous potential tenant prepared, I thought it was a good idea. On our way back I stopped by the bank and talked to Mario, the loan officer. He said that everything looked good and all we needed at this point was a copy of the lease to get the loan.
For next week I was trying to frantically come up with a name for the place. I had a few ideas and some of them seemed better than the others, however nothing striked me as perfect. I was getting tired of brainstorming the names, especially after doing this for two previous locations. One day I was sitting at my neighborhood bar with some friends and Bek, my girlfriend at the time, trying to come up with something that made sense. Nothing was coming up to my head anymore. I asked one of my friends, Craig, what a really bad tasting coffee is called in here. He said that probably "mud". I liked the sound of it, and since I love blues music, I almost immediately came up with a name Muddy Water. It sounded pretty good, however because it was so close to Muddy Waters' name, I decided against it. Than another friend suggested, how abut Mud? Just Mud, Cafe Mud, this was perfect, simple and easy, three letter word, with a “bad” streak build into it. I was sold immediately. Later, when I told Gosia about the name, she wasn’t as enthusiastic as I, but she didn’t dislike our name, MUD, neither.
Next day I experimented with logo. Since I am a graphic designer, I knew from the beginning that combination of letters U and D would create, with some minimal manipulation, a perfect cup. It didn’t take me too long to do, and pretty soon I had a first draft of our new logo. I showed it to everyone of my friends, and all of them seem to like it.
Few days later Gosia and I went to see our lawyer to establish a corporation. We decided to go with limited liability corporation, and day later Cafe Mud, LLC was born. I also brought a copy of our lease with me for the lawyer to look at. He took it and said that he will get back to me in a few days. Few days later I gave a revised version of it to Roy. He mentioned that there was another tenant that was going to rent a storefront next to us and open a tanning salon. Th tenant's name was Kim, Roy gave me her phone number and suggested that we get together. I called Kim right then and we agreed to meet and get introduced to each other. Kim sounded very nice on the phone and I was excited to meet her. Our meeting took place on late afternoon at the Cafe Express, on Dempster in Evanston. I had an espresso and Kim had cafe late. She arrived a few minutes late. When she walked into the shop, I knew it was her. She was roughly my age, attractive blond woman in amazingly good shape. We sat down and talked. Kim had a few problems with her business name. She told me what she was thinking about and I didn’t like these names neither. I told her that I would come up with some ideas and give it to her in a day or so. I did that and she loved them. That is how "Solaris Tanning Spa" was born.
Armed with my floor plans and plenty of good intentions I went to the Evanston Civic Center to find out all about proper licensing. I was prepared for multiple visits to this institution and I didn’t think that I would get all the information that very day. I was actually very surprised about the entire experience. Everybody was friendly and very helpful. I was prepared for being treated like just another nuisance, when in reality, I was treated in a very professional, yet warm and friendly way. However the news I got were not very exciting. First of all, I found out that the zoning didn’t allowed the coffee shop in this area and I would have to apply to zoning commission to change that for us. This process, I was told, would take somewhere between four to six month. The other piece of bad news was that, even tough my floor plans were as good as they could be, I still needed to hire licensed architect to prepare them for me. I was a bit bombed out with these news. All it meant was an additional costs.
Roy Holmes mentioned that he new an architect that wasn’t too expensive and who he knew personally. We set up an appointment and about three days later we actually met. Architect was from Romania and he sent his daughter/business partner to meet with us first. She measured the place and we talked a bit about the details. About hour and half later her father showed up and, after still taking some more measurements, promised that he would send me an estimate within a week. Week later I received it, and my jaw dropped. The estimate asked for over 12 thousand dollars. I was devastated. Of course I wasn’t going to pay this much, I couldn’t. I started to look around for another architect, and found one right here in Evanston. Somebody recommended him to us and told us that this one was the cheapest one we could possibly find. I went to his office few days later. We sat and talked about the project. He told me, off the bet, that he can do it for six thousand. It still seemed to high for me, however it was a big improvement already. In desperation I called my friend and former client, Candice, who knows a lot of people, asking whether she knew an inexpensive architect. She said that she did and gave me a phone number right away. I called and talked to a young man named Antwane, who seemed pretty knowledgeable about the whole process. We met a few days later at the location with him and his partner George, an older man with many years of experience. Antwane gave me quote right there and he asked for $2500 dollars. I was ecstatic. This meant that we would save ten thousand dollars there, at least compared to the first quote. I gave him the job on the spot.

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Cafe MUD floor plan and interior design rough rendering.

MUD's final floor plan, it is almost indentical to what was actually produced, minus the small stage by the window, which we still may build at some point (compare to the first plan few entries above.)


This is the original rendering of the MUD interior. The first time we "saw" what the place would look like in a very simplistic version. Rendered, based on the floor plans, in Adobe Illustrator, in a very "unortodox" manner. Mural in the front plane, the first picture on each side, and one in the very back are being used the same way as indicated in the rendering.

chapter 6 (More obstacles)

I gave the architect a CD with all the plans that I drew myself, line by line in Adobe Illustrator. I also created a three dimensional view of the place with projected colors and treatments (see the original illustration above), It was all used in the production to the detail. We made sure that the place was done as close as possible to original plans, both in feel and philosophy.
The match between three lawyers to agree on the lease started almost immediately. The lease went back and forth and finally we got to the point of agreement, as late as, in the beginning of November. Between mid August and the end of October, there was hardly anything to do. except, again, research and getting all possible licenses etc., of course including obtaining the investment money. Alarmed with some things that my banker said I started to talk to another bank through Small Business Administration. It looked much more promising. We were offered a higher loan, on much better terms. After the meeting with one of the local small banks, the whole thing was put in motion. I was going to see which one of the two financial institutions would give us the best option. That was all we could do at that point, except to wait and see.The whole situation was making us a little bit nervous at the times. We had so many rejections already, so many altered plans and etc. All of it made me very concerned with time, money, and many other things that were in between us and turning that key. The worse part was, that the most of these obstacles required time, time to wait for them to go through, and then the consciousness of the fact that there would be no time to spare as soon as they all materialized, most likely all at the same moment! We were trying our best to be prepared for it.
Towards the end of August, I contacted a friend of a friend named Nick, a Greek coffee shop owner who promised to help us with setting up the place, finding a suppliers and equipment. I jumped on his offer very fast, although Nick was a smooth talking guy, that I normally don'’t trust. The whole situation of the starting a coffee shop establishment kind of "out of the blue" in our situation, was a little ridiculous to me and everybody around me. I needed somebody solid, somebody who knew what they were doing, and Nick sounded just like this type of a person. Actually Nick really made the difference. He brought a hands on " now how" to many aspects of the process, and managed to destroy some fears that shouldn't be there in a first place. His input into the creation of MUD was undeniable. Thank you Nick for your help!
Nick looked over the architectural plans and ruled out some solutions that could potentially be disastrous in the long run. I was very happy with hiring Nick as a consultant, and I hardly recommend something like this arrangement for all of you that are dreaming about starting a coffee shop business from scratch! Find somebody local, somebody that already has a local experience and is willing to assist you in your struggle for a reasonable fee in a range of $700.00 to a $3.500.00 and really help you started. Don't let the discourage you, or affect your plans in a whole, just suck them out of information and input you need, while playing naive idiot, which makes them feel really, really fantastic in a process, (this way you can be sure they won't miss any improvement that comes to thier head, at least in a first initial moments, make sure you take notes while it is happenieng!) I would caution anybody who tries this, to really used the best judgment in dealing with this sharks. You have to realize that to some people, your request sounds like an open field, or license to rob you blind and still make you think that you have to thank them for what they did (because in most cases you do). Look at me, just a few lines above!!! I fell victim to it, although because being so restrained with my financing I salvaged some of the damages and actually got away a bit ahead, compared to if I directly trusted the supplier opinion.
Mud was really on it'’s way by then, I just refused to let myself recognize it just yet. Some explanation is due. My life was already in a big mess at this point on top of everything. I just separated with Gosia, my wife of eleven years and a wonderful woman to begin with! At the point that we split, which was about two month before this MUD Story starts, Gosia and I decided to separate. She broke my heart, even though I was the one leaving her. I left Gosia at the moment in which I loved her the most in my life. I was in love with Gosia more than I was ever in love with anybody.
We both agreed on separating, except that I demanded one condition. I wanted us to go our ways in a friendly manner, like a civilized people. Instead suing each other, jumping into each others eyes, in the name of what? Some few miserable belongins? Joining forces as a friends and building something together sounded like much better idea. Instead of feeding local economy and lawer's pockets, just join forces and build something that will make us both proud and get ahead at the same time. I am so greatfull to Gosia, the only wife I ever knew, for understanding this crazy concept, this vision! If it wasn't for Gosia, and her genuine, brilliant (at some points :) ) impute, this place called MUD would never exist.
The end of the year 2003 brought dreadful stillness into the MUD project. There was a lot happening, however, the real work that would show something for itself, didn'’t start until well into the beginning of the next, 2004, year. There was nothing but conceptualizing while drinking with some friends imput at this point, running some abstract ideas through thier heads. It was a very strange and dangerous stage in a development of our, or, as a matter of fact, any project. THE DREADFUL WAITING TIME!!!!! WAITING FOR EVERYTHING, JUST WAITING!!!! It didn'’t last for that long tough, and throughout the whole thing, I knew that this was just a temporary situation. At the same time I worked on the artwork that I wanted to be presented on the walls during the opening. I did some serious work on the logo and print formats. I secured a lot of suppliers and equipment, thanks again to this asshole Nick. It was sad to witness how much more time, than estimated, everything took, but at this point I felt like there was no way back and everything had to go (as smoothly as possible) ahead.
During that time Kim, who is much more industrious and “take-a-charge” kind of a "go getter"” girl., was already way on her way to the businessdom. She was intensely hiring specialists, family and friends, and the devil himself to produce her project, Solaris. Quite a straggle Kim, I really like the way you did this, I think that you are a dynamite! And you created a beautiful place in no time at all!!! Beautiful enough to still exist and draw all the wonderful girls from the neighborhood to itself! And not only beautiful girls, but everybody else who tans in the whole neighborhood! Way to go Kim!

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Solaris logos

These are the logos I designed for Kim's Solaris tanning salon. She ended up not using them and having her sister-in-law do the job instead...

Chapter 7 (Demolition days)

I vividly remember the first day of Solaris, demolition. Kim’s brothers and friends came and started to knock down the walls. The whole space was filled with dust, and there were at least ten people working around. It made me very self conscious and jealous, since our progress was at the standstill. Kim called me in the morning that day to me that she was going to throw away all the floor tiles that I was planning on using. I rushed there and for entire day picked the tiles from her floor. I accumulated close to 4000 of them perfectly matching parts of my floor. She laughed at me when I was doing this, but I knew that in a long run this will be well worth it, later I found out that each of the tiles cost more than a dollar fifty. This was an easy six thousand dollars saved for me in one day, not to mention that they were matching the existing floor in our space, so I probably saved additional thousand or two on labor as well.. I put them all in the corner by the window and they stayed there for month until next summer.
On a couple of different occasions during that time I visited my bank, unfortunately, my condo, which I was using as collateral, was appraised for much less than I thought originally. The amount of money I was going to be able to borrow from my bank was getting smaller and smaller.
Sometimes in September I contacted an espresso machines dealer from the west coast. He directed me to a local agent. Because I was using a consultant that had some sort of deal with the company, I was able to get 20% discount on the machine, which was great since this baby cost close to eight thousand dollars! I met with the agent, Lenny from LA Espress in Skokie, and looked at the model I was interested to purchase. It was a beautiful piece of equipment and I fell in love with it. I put the down payment on the machine and two grinders, and was going to pick it up when we were ready, still months ahead.
The architect finished my foor plans towards the end of September. I picked them up and look at them at home. It was very exciting. The plans looked so official and so professional. Antwane is a great professional, despite his young age, I really felt like our project was on it's way. At the same time I was working on getting all documents for the bank in Evanston, which seemed to be more cooperative.
We finally signed the lease in October. I went to Roy Holmes house and finalized the deal. Next day I went to the Civic Center in Evanston and gave the plans to all the different departments and while there I also applied for a demolition permit. It took just a few days before we received it.
During the month of November I met Harold, an African American electrician who lived in Evanston. He came over and looked at my electrical installation. Kim’s electrician gave me an estimate on how much the electrical would cost, and he wanted around seven thousand dollars. Harold came up with sum much lesser than this, only about four thousand, so I gave the job to him, realizing later that this was a big mistake that almost cost me the whole project.
During November I also hired a couple of HVAC guys to fix the air conditioning connection. I also brought in one of my friends, Kevin, who has his own construction company. Kevin looked at the place and the plans, and asked me about my budget, after I told him he said that this was impossible task to do, even if he didn't get any commision from it. Just to do demolition he quoted me for 7000 dollars not including the cost of dumpsters. His suggestion was to get a general contractor license in Evanston and do as much as I could myself, with a help of friends and family.
Next day I went to Civic Center and applied for general contractor license. It wasn’t very expensive, but it required an “open book” exam. I had to purchase a book (that was supposed to be open) and pay my fee of 160 dollars. Kim’s brother, who has a construction company and who was a general contractor on Solaris project, took this exam as well the day before me. At home, I roughly went through the book, it was overwhelming, it contained a lot of technical stuff which I didn’t understand nor know anything about. I paged through the whole thing and got a rough idea what was inside. Next afternoon I took the exam. it was supposed to take up to three hours. There were only a twenty few questions in the test, however to find an answer in the book, one really had to know what was going on. It was a very tough exam for me. I stayed there exactly three hours, and after I finished, I wished I had one more hour. Surprisingly, couple of days later I found out that I passed it, and had only two incorrect answers. Thus I became one of the proud general contractors family in the fine city of Evanston.
By the mid November I ordered a dumpster and put together a crew of six, including myself and my girlfriend Bek, to do the demolition. We got here in the mid morning and started to take down the walls. There was much more to it than I thought originally. For some reason I imagined that this demolition process will go very fast, after all, it wasn't a brainer. Just a brute power and destruction. Well, quickly I learned that there was much more to it than I thought. Demolition in total, took us over one month. This very first day we managed to expose half of the brick wall and got rid of some small partition walls. We cleaned all the dust and pieces and suddenly the place looked completely different. This is what I really like about most of the construction process, the visible effect of the labor. For the next month, there was never a crew of that many people working in the place. Usually there would be from two to four people at any given day. Gosia couldn’t help because of her asthma she couldn’t take all that dust.
It was very cold and snowy when we were demolishing the place. The most unpleasant part of the job for me we organizing the dumpster. After every day of work, it seemed to be filled to a capacity, and I had to go inside with a saw, cut all the large pieces, put flat ones next to the walls, and compact everything. This usually took a several hours every couple of days but it saved me on getting another two dumpster at four hundred dollars each. Another thing was, that organizing it made only sense before the work started, it was better to leave the dumpster seemingly filled up to the limit, and wait till the beginning of another work day to organize it. Why? Because dumpsters are like magnets, they attract all the large pieces of garbage from the entire neighborhood, you know what I am talking about, mattresses, old kitchen cabinets, beds, large boxes, tables, chairs, rolls of old carpeting, including padding, and many more, not to mention the small stuff, like bags of general kitchen garbage, from devoured lunch boxes through umbrellas and empty cases of beer, plus some other items that I wouldn't mention here. I guess this must be the nature of the beast!

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MUD, pre-construction

MUD demolition, showing the window treatment used throughout the construction


MUD demolition, looking west toward the bar and stage area,

same view as above now

These two were taken roughly from the same angle as the above pre-construction picture

Chapter 8 (Pre-construction days)

Initial part of the demolition process went pretty fast. Although we had to tear down the walls, floors, drop ceiling, all the electrical installation, all the plumbing, there was a bar in the corner that had to go as well, including two dead beer coolers. The worst part was a sixteen feet grill hood that hung in the former kitchen. I tried to sell some stuff that I didn’t have any use for on Ebay. One of the items was the grill hood. At this point we didn’t have our financing approved yet, and everything had to be paid from our pocket. My bank came down drastically on the amount of the loan they were willing to give us. It was roughly half of what we initially talked about. So we decided to concentrate on the other one. This option came through in the middle of December. I remember first money transfer to the Mud’s bank account, the very same day I went on a “shopping spree” at Home Depot, and purchased some items that I knew we will use. I got five halogen lamps, some heavy duty extension cords and some other general items. In the evening we celebrated at the local bar. Finally we were really on our way. Next day I covered the windows with a brown paper. We actually put some work in the place on a daily basis, most of the days only three of us, my girlfriend Bek, Dennis and I. Bek was a tremendous help during the whole process. Although being very skinny, she put up a work worth of a 250 lbs. man, knocking down the walls, removing pieces of old equipment, bringing the materials in. I never wanted her to do any physical work here and told her this on many occasions, she never listened to me, I guess her love for me wouldn’t let her leave me alone in there. Thank you Bek for all you have done.
Right before holidays I created a “cut-out” from the brown paper covering the windows. It said “Coming soon Cafe MUD" I put a lot of stars around it and backed up the cut out parts with translucent paper to give it a back light effect. One of my friends, Robert, helped me with this and we spent most of the christmas eve up till one or two in the morning installing it. We shared a fish from Chicken Shack around the corner and this was about it for similarites with every other christmas eve in my life up till this point. This display was a very short lived, however, the new windows were going to be put in day after new years, so it only lasted for about a week.
Putting new windows and door took only a day of work for the company that did this. It was exciting to see. New windows were going to open in the summer. After the workers left I opened them wide just to see what it looked and felt like. This was pretty impressive, entire place changed, and became so inviting and open, almost as good as being outdoors. Day after the windows were installed, I created another window treatment. I covered them with brown paper and in each of four panels put one large letter of the word CAFE on the top, in the middle I cut out the logo. Bek showed up at eleven thirty or so in the evening and helped me to install the display. We sprayed the panels with glue and pasted directly to the glass. Cuts were covered with a translucent paper again to create the light box effect. After we finished, we stepped outside and took a picture (see below). A group of the students passed by and one of the girls said: "how cool..." It felt so good to hear, thank you whoever you were.
City kept asking for a changes to our architectural plans and we couldn’t get the building permit until the mid April. There were some things that could be done and we progressed with them. My friend Dennis helped me on a daily basis for a month or two. I would pick him up every morning and we would work on various things. First we removed the large bar from the entrance area. It took a while, since this chaotic structure was towering all the way to the ceiling. We fixed as much walls as we could, organized everything we could organize and had a lot of fun in a process. We continued with demolition and got rid of some more walls etc. The kitchen area was the one that gave us most trouble. There was an old gas heated prep table in there, when we cut the pipes and started to remove it, the smell of natural gas filled the place. We freaked-out and called the gas company. It was a false alarm, since the smell came only from the gas trapped in the pipes, which we originally suspected, well, being safe is always a good idea.
Floors in the place were in a poor shape to say the least. Especially in the areas where water was in use, like kitchen and bar area. After removing the bar we found the floor in such a bad shape that it was impossible to walk on it without falling through. I talked to Roy about taking care of it. We agreed that I will be able to take the cost of repairs off the rent and some of them he promised to fix using his own crew. Another thing that we did, was taking down the drop-ceiling. Original ceiling above that was totally damaged. It had a holes in it size of the large coffee table. It looked horrible. I was thinking about fixing it myself, but then I got some quotes from the local companies to do the job. One of them suggested putting all new drywall over entire stretch the ceiling, they thought it would be less expensive than trying to fix it. I gave them the job. Even though technically we were not supposed to build anything, I felt like this was actually fixing the damage rather than building anything new, and the work started in mid February.
Dennis and I also purchased all the drywall we needed to fix the place. We brought it here in our friends pick up truck. At about the same time the first pieces of equipment that Nick got for us came. We got brand new prep-table and refrigerated display cooler. I also signed up for a food handling course at the Evanston’s health department. I wasn’t really required to do so, but I thought that this may help me in a long run. I wanted to know about the process of food-handling before starting to work on the kitchen and bar. This was a very good idea and proved very useful later. I didn’t start that course until April.
Everything was stretching and taking more time than anticipated. By the end of February we started to pay our rent and by the end of March we were scheduled to start making payments on our loan. In the meantime Harold, the electrician from hell, came over with his sons and helped to take down the grill hood and all the ducts that were in the kitchen area. This took them a few days. They attached thick ropes to the sides of the hood, put some two by fours underneath for an extra support and cut the chains. It was early evening and I was horrified watching the process. This hood must have weigh a ton and seeing them walking underneath damn thing supported only with half inch ropes and some two by fours seemed very dangerous, and it was. When they started lowering it, and were almost done with one side of it, the ropes snapped and 2x4’s supporting the other end broke like a match sticks. Thank god this was already towards the end of the process, otherwise somebody would have end up injured, probably seriously. Place started to look much, much bigger after this part was done.

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MUD construction, window treatments

MUD, construction windows treatment at night



MUD, holiday window treament, one that lasted only for a few days. Day and night views, with Dennis standing in the foreground.

.... Cafe MUD last summer

Summer of 2005, Bek and her sister, Susie, in front of MUD, what a difference!!! the place breathes now!

... the story of the "outside"

... and the original rough rendering, intersting to compare vision with reality (patio hasn't been built yet)

Chapter 9 (Construction begins)

Unfortunate grill hood was moved from the ceiling to the middle of the room, where it sat until it was sold on Ebay in the middle of April. All during that time, it was dripping old brown grease all over the place. Harold, the electrician from hell, started to work for us early in 2004. He purchased whole bunch of materials, of which big portion is still sitting in our basement. I gave him the keys to the place and one morning realized that he was sleeping on the floor as well, using it as his large, extremely cold and messy bedroom. Apparently Harold was homeless, which is hard to believe, since he held an electrical contractor license, and haveing one of these can be very lucrative business. This should have raised all the flags, but I always believed in giving people a chance, second, third... so I didn’t do much about it.
In the meantime I was going through another hell of a time with my condominium as well. I rented it almost two years years before to a wonderful black couple with a small child. For the first year and a half it was great, they really took care of the place and always paid the rent on time. However around April of 2003 the couple split and she became the only tenant. I never realized that she was a recovered alcoholic and drug user. When her boyfriend left her, she went straight back to her old habits of drug and alcohol abuse, not to mention, according to my neighboors, prostituting herself and changing my lovely condo into the crack house and unofficial brothel. Needless to say she also stopped paying her rent altogether.
I started an eviction process in the middle of the summer by giving her five day notice. At that point police was called to my place on a regular basis, at least once or twice a week, and there was a pressure on me from the police and from the ward's alderman to "fix" the problem. I was informed that if I don’t do something about it, I will be charged $700 dollars for each police intervention. Of course my tenant knew all the tricks of the "how to beat the system" game, and she played all of them on me. I continued to be nice to her, and strongly believe that if I wasn't, the place would be in much worse shape than it was.
When the case finally went to the court, she didn’t show up, next date she was there, and she was ordered to move. I contacted sheriffs department and scheduled the eviction which wasn’t going to happen until mid December. In December temperature outside was below 30 degrees so she couldn’t be evicted, than the holiday season came and sheriffs office wasn’t "doing" the evictions, after the holidays they were so backed up that the process was postponed until mid January. Finally I got her out of the place. My condo, in which I put months of work and tons of money, was in the worse shape than it was before I bought it. The payments were killing us, there was no income coming from the property and, between assessments and the bank loan payments, we had to spend over a thousand dollars each month to keep it.
At this critical point Harold, the electrician from hell, came to the “rescue”. With his sweet, deeply carrying voice, he offered to rent the condo, initially in exchange for his work on the MUD electrical installation. This seemed like a great idea at first. We signed up the lease and the contract and I gave him the keys to both my condo and my business. Harold was very happy! He even promised to do some small repairs and cleaning the apartment to help us out.
During that time we were already interviewing possible suppliers for coffee, pastries and other stuff. Almost every week somebody else showed up with a samples (the best part of opening a coffee shop :)) We tried many coffee roasters, local as well as long distance ones. By the end of tasting process we narrowed down to two companies, one from west coast and the other from Midwest. I also looked for help with constructing the stage, floors (which were going to be a combination of tile and hardwood), bar, plumbing and tables. My friend Pawel, who is a carpenter “artisian” offered to built the tables. His ideas were great, and I would love to have him construct our furniture, however his price, although very low for what it was, was still to high for us, so we decided to keep this end open until short before the opening.
After Harold moved to my condo, I haven’t seen him for a month and a half. Initially he would answer my calls and always, promptly, promise to “be there tomorrow morning”. Finally he stopped to answer the phone alltogether. Nick Philipas, the consultant from hell, disappeared with over three thousand dollars he took from us for some additional equipment, and he too stopped answering my calls. It was pretty brutal. Sometime in the beginning of February 2004 my friend Dennis, who up to this point was the only help I had, decided to quit as well, and walked out in the middle of one winter morning not to be seen in the MUD again, although we still remind being freinds and meet regularely in other locations.
At this point money was running out fast. I was too scared to even do the “math”. Most of the days I was working alone, doubting, in my mind, whether this place will ever be open or not. I refused to stop going and did all the work I could by myself. The tennis match between the city and my architect was still going strong then. The plans kept being rejected and redone. Finally in the middle of April I went to the Civic Center and asked what was going on. The health inspector I talked to politely informed me that all I needed to do, instead redrawing the plans, was to write a letter of intent, in which I would promise to address the trouble spots. I was furious, we wasted at least four month while the solution was simple and “around the corner”. Next day I typed out the letter and delivered it personally. By the next afternoon the building permit was issued. Even though the whole picture looked grim, I celebrated the entire night!
In a few days, after getting the permit, I organized small group of friends to help hanging the drywall. There was supposed to be about five people that promised to contribute, only one, Paul, showed up. Paul and I didn’t have any previous experience in doing this, and to make things worse I decided that we should attack the "trouble spots" first. One of them, which took us all day, was the ceiling in the small “room” next to the stage, where the couch stands now. Stage wasn’t built yet so the ceiling was much higher. I measured the area and started to cut the drywall. Of course I had to redo it three times, since I was cutting a mirrored shape of it. When I finally got it right, we started to attach the sheets. The first one was too heavy to stay there supported with two screws that I managed to get in, and fell on the top of our heads, Paul and I stood there on the ladders supporting heavy piece of drywall with both hands and heads not knowing what to do next. Somehow I managed to secure the sheet enough to properly attach it with multitude of screws. Every time since then, Paul joked that: "we used our heads in more than one way to build the MUD." Thank you Paul!

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Chapter 10 (Construction days)

That first phase of construction, installing drywall with Paul's helped, even though there wasn’t much to show for a "day’s work", to give me a great sense of accomplishment for some reason. At least one spot looked somewhat done when we finished. After waiting for the building permit for such a long time I suddenly felt like there was a pair of wings attached to my shoulders. Everything seemed possible. Roughly at the same time Ben, a friend and HVAC specialist, determined that our hot water boiler was sabotaged by the previous tenant and we couldn’t use it anymore. The price of new one was over two thousand dollars. This piece of news didn’t make me happy, but at this point I was prepared for any kind of news.
Ben also brought his plumber friend, Quinn, who pretty much told us that entire plumbing in the place was useless and would have to be replaced with a new one. He estimated the job for at least seven to eight thousand dollars, this was another unpleasant surprise. Our costs were rising all over the place. I was brainstorming where and how to cut the corners in order to accommodate the new expenses. I decided to give Quinn the job. He promised to start right away and be done with it by the end of April. Since he was working full time at his "day job" he could only work here at night and during the weekends.
Roughly during that period of time, I hired a construction company to drywall the ceiling. I thought that doing this would be too much for us, especially that we didn’t have a right equipment to do it. This was a good idea, they did the job in a fast and very professional manner, leaving our ceiling looking new and fresh. It only cost a little over two thousand dollars and it was well worth the money. We tried to progress with our work as much as we could. Every day another part of the wall space was finished. The problem was that this is an old building and there is hardly any right angles there, so every measurement had to be taken precisely. There was a lot of cutting and patching involved. Ben was progressing with the boilers, instead of putting one, one hundred gallons we put two sixty gallon tanks, which also would guarantee that if one goes bad, the other will still work.
In the middle of April I took a course of food handling at Evanston Department of Health. I didn’t have to take one to open a coffee shop, but I thought that this was a good idea, since I didn’t know much about food preparation at that point. I also wanted to do this before starting to work on bar and kitchen area. Later I realized how fortunate this was. Certain things just cannot be figured out just by using a common sense. I learned a lot and actually liked the course itself. It was taught by Evanston health inspectors and it was very well organized. I enjoyed it so much, that, on one occasion, when I was few minutes late I was very disappointed to miss even a little bit of it. It fascinated me just like watching a Discovery channel programming does. This course was like watching a documentary for me. After completing it, I not only new a lot about the food handling, but also got acquainted with health inspectors and other restaurant owners and workers including Alex, the owner of Liquid Cafe, another coffee shop in Evanston, who was very friendly and even gave me some pointers, since she opened her shop a few month ahead of us.
Armed with my new knowledge I reworked the kitchen and bar plans to accommodate for certain aspects of the proper food preparation process. I also called one of the inspectors immediately to come over and assist me in making some decisions. His name is Kailas and he is a bright young man who seems to be fascinated with what he does. He looked the place over and gave me some very useful advice, which helped a lot later, making our licensing and approvals much smoother. Course lasted for several hours each day and was rather intense. Every long break I would run to the shop to check on the progress the plumbers were making. Second day of their work, Quinn informed me that the old grease trap, left from the previous restaurant tenant, wasn’t operational, on top of being too small. Following his suggestion I ordered a new one which cost almost a thousand dollars plus installation, not to mention ten days it took to order it.
The weather outside was getting warmer and were rushing to open by the end of school year at Northwestern University. The closer we were to that deadline, the more we realized that this was totally unrealistic plan. Harold the electrician from hell, didn’t show up until then. One day I went to my condo to talk to him. I knocked at the door and windows but there was nobody in there. I opened the door and walked in. Harold was sitting on the floor visibly high on something other than alcohol. I don’t even think he remember me talking to him that day. He talked to me in a very hazy way and promised to come next day. Of course he didn’t show up, apparently Harold had some hard drug problem. Which was confirmed to me later by couple of different people, including Roy, the building administrator who knew Harold very well and worked with him previously.
I was very upset and after couple of days went back to Harold's apartment, my condo. He wasn’t there. I tried to get in, but none of my keys worked. I was very angry and called my friend who is a locksmith, we got into the apartment and changed all the locks. About seven in the evening Harold called me and suddenly wanted to talk. This was a first phone call I received from him in two month or so, after countless voice mails I left for him on a daily basis. Harold came to the shop fifteen minutes after the phone call. When he walked in I told him to get to work immediately and that we will talk later. He did just that, got up on the ladder and started to work. Within a few hours we had several tracks mounted to the ceiling, which was very exciting to see. I told Harold that I am not going to give him the keys to the condo and that I will personally take him home every evening after the work was done. I did just that and for the next week, he would come to the place promptly and put at least three to four hours of work daily.

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Chapter 11 (Hood buyers and the "floor crew")

Harold didn't last too long as an electrician. He finally got into my condo through the window and just simply left the door open to get back in. I have hardly seen any rent money from him, needless to say, he put a minimal amount work into the place and most of it had to be redone anyway. I still believed him when he said that he will help. The only useful work that Harold did, was actually temporary light and outlets that worked for us during the construction.
On the plumbing end, the April deadline, Quinn gave me to finish the job, turned out to be yet another myth. Things were going much slower, I didn't mind too much because there was a lot of other stuff that needed to be done too, and I knew they will take a lot of time anyway.
Around the same time I sold the grill hood on Ebay. Some small pizzeria, from Ohio, bought it. They came to claim it about two weeks after it was sold. When I heard the guy on the phone, with his heavy accent, he got me a bit scared. Not by the way he spoke as much as by the way he was thinking. First of all, it occurred to me a day before he came, that he was driving here in a small pick up truck and a trailer all by himself. How was he going to load this thing on it? You have to remember that hood was solid, thick sheet metal, about 16 Ft. long, about 5 ft. wide, and roughly 2 ft. deep. He tried to ease up my concerns, when I talked to him next time and told me that he had help. Later I realized that help was his 15 years old son. I didn't really feel like loading this baby on the trailer and promised myself not to even touch the damn thing. Of course reality had proven different and I ended up spending good three hours getting the hood out of the space and, of course, loading it promptly on the trailer. Both of them hardly spoke to me, and none of the words they used was neither "thank" nor "you".
This was a strange couple of people, as I said before, father had an extremely strong accent and son didn't seem to be as challenged as his dad, however it didn't bother me too much, since they said combined two sentences to me in the entire time I spent with them, and as I mentioned earlier, none of these contained the phrase "thank you". Son was very well developed for his age, tall and strong. He seemed a little more friendly than the father was, however, this too could be just an impression, since he hardly said anything. At some point, just when we were about to finish the job of loading it, and everybody got a little more relaxed, he laughed at something that his father said, I didn't understand it at all, when I looked at the son's face I noticed that his entire mouth was totally tooth-less, with one exception: one tooth in his upper jaw, located perfectly in the middle of it. Maybe because it was the only one of at least fifteen that should be there, this solitary relict was of enormous size, very long and skinny, far from perfection too. This long tooth had black edges, and was eaten half way through on both of them. I felt bad for the boy, I imagined what he had to go through at school and I wondered why his parents would put him through this hell. I can only imagine all the names he was called by his schoolmates. When the duo finally were ready to leave, their truck died right in front of the building, blocking entire street. Fortunately they were able to fix the car within next fifteen minutes.
Hanging the drywall progressed smoothly. Some days there will be a few people here working, some days it would be just me myself. After priming the walls the entire place became very bright. White walls looked very pure and clean. I was tempted to leave them as they were, so was Gosia. She kept pressing me to keep the walls white. I didn't really want to change my original plans. Sometimes the first thought is the best. During that time I was looking for people who could help me with carpentry and flooring. Harold's son gave me a quote on the floors and, although it wasn't very high, it seemed too high to me, or rather to my budget. I talked to a few friends of mine who were in a flooring business and they agreed to do the job. I knew them for a while and I realized that if I didn't jump on it immediately they may change their mind, or have some other job to do. Even though I wanted to do my floors as a last construction job, since I didn't want them to get damage by other building activities.
Work on my floors started almost immediately after we agreed on the details. Four guys, Bob, Carlos, Cory, Ghetto Joe and Drunk Rock were the crew. I need to say some more about this fine young men, since they were such a colorful bunch. All of them, except Ghetto Joe, I knew for some years.
BOB is a half American-Indian man, very insightful and pretty bright. I always enjoyed talking to him, since he tries to get deeper into the sense of things. Bob was a captain of the crew.
CARLOS (or Los as he and his friends call him) is Bob's friend and former roommate, he is Mexican by ancenstry, but he was born and raised in US. Carlos is a very skillful and carrying "floor-man" he loves hardwood floors and he puts himself into it.
CORY I knew for years, he is a permanent "fixture" on the streets in the area where I lived, and where he grew up. Cory is a kind of aimlessly wondering spirit. He used to oscillate between California and Chicago, hanging out on the water front piers and beaches, fishing partying and drinking beer. He knows everybody in the area and everybody seems to know him.
GHETTO JOE, possibly the most colorful one out of this group, came from the south side of Chicago, he was Bob's friend and worker on some construction and remodeling jobs. Ghetto Joe is a relatively young man, however his age is very difficult to define, since he seems to be in continuous state of mental and physical "chrysalis". Joe called me "Abyss" for some reason. I didn't really mind, and that's the way it stayed between two of us. One of very interesting things about Ghetto Joe is that he is engaged in a perpetual dialog with everybody and nobody. He never stops talking. Sometimes I noticed that if one leaves Joe in the middle of the sentence, the stream of words never stops. Joe also does a perfect Beavis (from "Beavis and Butthead" cartoon) impersonation. He just becomes the character. He is also a mater of "upside down" beer drinking, (which almost broke Cory's back one night, while attempting).
DRUNK ROCK, used to be a singer in a punk rock group. Tattoos on his face are the testimony of these times. His one eye is framed by tattooed "eyelashes"and his jaw by two pistols that meet down in the middle of his throat. His has almost a scary appearance at first, however he is a very good guy inside, of rather soft, quiet nature. I always liked him the most out of the group for some reason. Although they all were fun to be around and to hang out with, at least for a short while.. as long as my beer tolerance alowes...

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Chapter 12... "The MUD Floor Party"

What a fun it was! Something so boring and ordinary as constructing a floor, can become such an entertainment to all involved, with a little help of a friends. First day of construction started on schedule. Bob, Carlos and Ghetto Joe worked on preparing the sub-floor, while Cory and I went to the flooring supply store to get the wood. We looked at all the samples there and I decided to get the red oak. Fortunately this was one of the most inexpensive kinds of hardwood there (accidentally one of the most attractive as well), and it was on sale too, so we got a pretty good deal. After loading the car, there was hardly any room for Cory to sit, he ended up being squeezed between the door and a few cardboard boxes. To load my small Nissan Altima with all this material, was trully an impressive task. Of course the interior suffered some damage, but by then I decided that this car was going to be a "delivery vehicle" or company "truck", as I jokingly called it. By the end of construction, almost entire building material here was brought in it.
Of course work wouldn't be going "smoothly" without proper "oiling". So I ended up getting a case of 30 GMD beers a day. It was fun, lots of laughs and jokes, lots of funny stories and beers... These guys worked equally as hard though. After the first day we laid the section of the floor right by the main entrance door.
I loved the wood we used, although it was raw, but my plans called for staining it dark. The purity of color, pattern of darks and lights were stunning. I was very tempted to leave it as it was, again, I wanted to stay as close to original design as possible. To see this "virgin" pure, stretch of flooring next to all the construction and demolition mess was a huge contrast. It only made the floor itself look more beautiful.
My floor "crew" worked very hard indeed, almost day and night. Some of them stayed and slept at the construction site. It was during one of these nights that Cory claimed to had seen the ghost. The rest of us didn't take him seriously, but (you will find out in a next few chapters!) there was something unnatural happening in here, every now and then...
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At the same time I was looking for paint and painting materials to finish off our walls. Dennis' friend Milan got us BM paint for cheaper, since he had a discount in one of the stores. He brought in the paint one late evening, while floor was being constructed. We had a couple of beers and partied for a bit. Milan was very impressed with the progress of the work and thought, from his contructor point of view, that these guys did a really good job.
Within a week the hardwood floor was completed. In order to save on the costs, I decided to "square-off" south edge of the hardwood floor. My original plan was to have to semi-cirlce edges between hardwood and the rest of the tile flooring. When I designed it, I realized that this would be aslo associated with more costs. Bob, even though this meant more problems for him, pushed me very hard to stay with original concept, so we did. The hardwood floor ended up being rounded on both sides, thank you Bob, this really looks and works much better for the interior!
Soon we were cutting the edges of the hardwood. In my original plans the semi-circular edge of it had much shorter radius. I decided to make the circles much bigger, almost twice as much as the original plan. Sometimes it is hard to visualize things just based on the floor plans. Decission was made, and floor was ready to be cut. Bob drew the circle with an aid of some made-shift compas, consisting of the piece of twine, screw driver and a pencil. It took quite a bit of a time to cut that thing. Bob wanted to make it as good as possible and I agreed with him. This circle edges had to be perfect, I knew that if there was even a slight imperfection in the flow of the edge, this would become an attention catcher at some point, when the shop was in operation, and I wanted to avoid this. What I wanted to achieve was to be able to direct the attention of a visitor exactly where I wanted it to go, without any accidental interruptions.
Cutting the north edge wasn't a problem because there was a lot of room right next to it, so it went pretty smoothly. Bob traced the edge on the tissue paper and than flipped it and applied it to the other edge. After tracing the line wasn't as smooth and flow-less as the first one, and it took a lot of twicking and redrawing in order to get it perfect. Finally both were cut. This was a great moment to see, practically, the first element of the interior taking it's finall shape. We rented a sander and started the finish. It took a several rounds of sending and the entire process consumed several days.
Finally the floor was ready to be stained. It looked so increadibly prestine, and I really hated to put a stain on it. This was a beautiful wood in its natural form. Light almost pink in shade, with gray, almost black darker spots. Carlos made sure to alternate the dark spots, while choosing the boards, so the entire hardwood was uniformly "sprinkled" with these. We applied the stain to it as soon as the floor was sanded. Although I liked it in a raw form, when I saw the stained floor I loved it. It looked almost as a musical instrument. It had a kind of violin feel to it. Carlos came to work on it during the weekend, when we didn't have anything else happening there construction wise. He wanted the stain to dry for a couple of days undisturbed. That Saturday, he worked on it early in the morning, and when I got there to check the progress, he was already done and gone. I will never forget the moment when I walked into the place and saw our floor looking exactly like it was supposed to look. It was a mid afternoon, on a cloudy day, the palce was dark. I turned on the halogen lights and couldn't believe my eyes. Sourounded by all the construction mess, tools, materials etc, laid this large beautiful object, so prestine, so fine. I sat next to it for long time, trying to imagine the entire place finished. Trying to imagine the MUD.
to be continued...

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Chapter 13 (Tiles, murals and pastries)

After the hardwood part of MUD's floor was done, there was time to finish the tiled area. Bob, Drunk Rock and his girlfriend Sharka did that part. Bob was trying to finish it as soon as he could because three of them were going downstate for a weekend. I was supposed to join them on the trip, but I decided against it, since there was so much work left to do.
The tile floor took a while, there was a lot of tile cutting involved. Bob worked on that part for couple of days. Rounded edges presented the most problem. Initially Bob just "eye-balled" spacing the tiles, but I decided to actually use the quarter inch spacers to make the distances perfect. I was glad I did, since this made whole difference in look. I wouldn't mind roughly spaced floor if the rest of it was done this way as well, but it wasn't, so we had to be consistent. Bob wasn't too happy about it, because it slowed down the process significantly.
On Friday, that week, the floor was finally done and three of them did the grouting. Everything went really fast. Around the afternoon that day, I was standing by the back door of the place and suddenly realized that a pile of garbage in the corner grew out of proportions, to say the least. There were countless beer cans, some bit's and pieces of food and, since this was a warm day and both front windows and the back door were open, the flies had a field day. I immediately went to the hardware store and got a big garbage can and a box of heavy duty trash bags, it was about the time to do so.
Grouting of the floor took longer than Bob had expected. When they finally finished it was already well past eight. Floor looked spectacular. It was very exciting to see at least one element of the space, close to what it was supposed to look like. After the weekend, when we allowed it to dry completely, we covered the hardwood part of the floor with layeres of flattened cardboard boxes to protect from damage during the construction. Following weeks we proceeded with drywalls and such.
Plumbing was being done slowly as well. Quin only came on every other weekend or so, and even that was getting more sporadic. I had a few interior contractors give me an estimates on painting of the place, and they ranged in price from four to seven thousand dollars. I was also researching furniture and trying to find a tables and chairs for the place. I had whole bunch of tables from the restaruant that used to be here, but the only part that I had any use for were the table bases. The tops were cheap plastic and pink in color. At the beginning I considered Bob to build both, my stage and my bar, but it didn't turn out that way.
We also worked on the brick wall. The wall was never exposed and it was in a pretty bad shape. The very last couple of yards of it were previously uncovered and painted over with, as I counted, nine thick layers of paint. I contacted some contractors about cleaning it up. The solutions were ranging from acid wash, through the power-wash to sand-blasting. I tried to do the acid wash myself, and managed to get most of the paint off. It took me a very long time, it required a huge amount of scraping to really make it work. After the majority of paint was removed I realized that most of it was actually inbedded in brick itself. I hired a contractor to wash it off and changed my mind at the last moment, because I didn't want the water damage in the place. Finally I decided that the best solution would be to design a large mural and match the paint that existed in the corner, forcing it to depict my logo. I designed a several different murals and finally picked one that is there today. It was simple and I designed it to complement the style of the place.
I was hopping to be able to open the place by the end of May, begining of June, before students went on thier summer vacation. Every passing day, I realized, more and more, than this was an impossible deadline, so we kept moving it farther into the future. I thought that opening the shop while students were gone for the summer break, could be beneficial for us, since there would be some time to do the training and to try how things work without any pressure.
We were still searching for the suppliers, trying different kinds of coffee and sweets. One warm spring day in May, while we were working on our walls with the open windows, a women approached me and asked about the place. She explained that she had a commercial bakery around the corner and was very interested in selling us her product. We tried several things, that's how we were intruduced to one of our best suppliers of baked goods, Sugar and Spice of Evanston.

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Mural Art

Original rendering of MUD's mural


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Chapter 14 (How MUD's stage was erected, and the beginnings of the Bar)

There was a never ending stream of suppliers that went through the MUD at this time. Mostly bakeries and coffee roasting companies. By that time, the spring of 2004 we narrowed our coffee possibilities down to two. One of the Umbria, from West Coast, and the other our present supplier. Umbria is an award winning company with an excellent product line. We really liked their coffee, however we still preferred the one we are using right now, by a very narrow margin. This was a very tough choice. On the construction end, the walls were still being fixed up, all the glitches and trouble spots. I also hired Bob, Ghetto Joe and Cory to work on constructing the stage. It didn't take more than a week to build. Bob took this project very seriously, trying to make it as strong as possible, after all there was going to be some jumping happening there at some point in the future. While three of them worked on the stage, I was still painting the mural. It took me good several days to do so. I wanted to give it an antique look. Second or third day of stage construction, when all the structure of it was already in place, and the only part missing was the top layer, Cory stood on one of the 2x4's, grabbed his harmonica and played a few notes. As soon as he finished he shouted: "I am the first person to play on MUD's stage!", and he was.
By the end of each day the crew was pretty drunk, but the work seemed to be unaffected by it and went smoothly. Soon the stage was finished.
Same people, and couple more friends helped with painting the place. Carlos and Cory painted the ceiling. Carlos decided to do two layers of paint to avoid streaking. This was a very good idea, and the only reason why our ceiling has such a nice flat quality to it. When this part was done, and one of the first walls painted to our olive-green color, I kind of freaked out. Suddenly, in contrast to still primed white walls, the new part seemed very, very dark. I started to think about either introducing a new lighter shade of green in addition, or using a lighter paint all over the place. Again, I decided to be as close to my original idea s possible, good thing I did.
I wanted Bob to construct my bar, but after building the stage he started to work on some jobs on the south side and it was difficult to get hold of him. One day I stopped by the Morseland, restaurant and bar in Rogers Park, and ran into my old friend and former neighbor, Clayton. When we talked I mentioned to him that we were in the process of constructing the cafe. Clayton has a small construction business and, as I found out, was a skillful carpenter. I asked him about building the bar and he seemed to be very interested. We sat an appointment and few days later Clayton showed up at the site. I roughly explained to him what we were thinking about and we agreed that he will build the bar. Clayton requested some plans and I promised to give it to him next week or so. He really liked the place and the concept of it all together, and seemed to be very excited about the job.
During next week I went over the plans in my mind. Thought about a few different ways of approaching it and finally got my mind set on one of the solutions. I never drew any plan and when Clayton finally showed up to pick it up, I ended up drawing it on the proverbial napkin. This was still good enough for this bright young man to do a wonderful job. In a couple of days he showed up here and constructed the prototype of the basic structure with a sheets of cardboard. It was very exciting to see it erected in the corner and, with a bit of imagination, looking just like it was supposed to. Next day we went to the Home Depot and purchased all necessary materials. Clayton started to work on the project immediately and really made sure that the bar structure was strong and dependable.
The floor part of the bar still wasn't finished and, since Bob was gone, Gosia and I decided to lay the tiles. It took us about two days, and we finished it on Sunday. Next week, Clayton came with a pieces of the bar and put them in place. It was just a raw plywood and didn't have the feel yet, but we were all excited, since it already looked like a bar.
Simultaneously we were cleaning the place, constantly organizing and re-organizing, trying to keep it already as clean as we could. The floor was washed on a daily basis and was getting cleaner and cleaner. We also started to work on the walk-in cooler and dishwashing machine. Both were very dirty and it took weeks to clean. Gosia took all the shelving apart and scrubbed it to the point that all looked new. Dishwashing machine took, two people, two full days to clean. After the walk-in was cleaned, we sealed all the holes and painted everything metallic silver. I remember a funny moment, when we got to the point of re-finishing the walk-in cooler's floor, I took a good look at it and realized that, what I thought was a linoleum finish, was a quarter inch thick layer of dirt painted over many times to make it look clean. It was totally disgusting. I also had to create a threshold from a sheet metal, and found out how difficult something as simple as banding it to the perfect, sharp, ninety degrees angle, was. When we finally finished, the cooler looked brand new.


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