A Ceramic Kitchen

Hey everyone,
I hope you are having a great time wherever you are. We've been hearing that winter is here for most of the country, I won't tell you that it's supposed to be about 70 degrees here in Alabama this weekend. Rough life huh?

Anyway, it's time to do a bit of an update on the kitchen. You saw pictures of what it looked like when we started removing the peeling, chipping paint from the floor. We were able to get everyone off, and decided we needed some assistance to see what we should put down on the floor. We called the health department to see what they recommended, and they dropped a bit of a bomb on us. They are no longer going to accept painted concrete as a floor in a kitchen. So it looked like the new floor was going to be tiled! The board of health recommended that we bring them a sample of what we would like to use, and they would tell us if it passed muster or not. After waiting for over an hour for the final decision (thanks Ray for waiting) they said we can put in ceramic tile, but they recommend quarry tile in the places where heavy equipment will be sitting on the floor (that means the fry cookers and the stove.) Well, things have moved beyond that point, and the ceramic tiles have been laid!

Above is a picture of the installers putting in the tile (seriously, they are great at what they do. Could you lay a whole room of tiles this straight? I'm sure I couldn't.) So, we have new tiles in the kitchen! The main dining hall area has also had all its paint removed, and we are looking at some new solutions for that. Things are really starting to look great in the dining and kitchen areas of Camp Dixie. I'm very excited to reveal the changes to our first group rental at the beginning on January, and can't wait until everyone sees it at the first chicken dinner in February! (That's scheduled for February 3, 2008, so make sure you come to see it then!)


Here's a picture of the tiles laid down, but before being grouted. If you look closely under the vent hood you can see the quarry tile. More finished pics to come after the New Year.

Have a great weekend!
See you at camp (on February 3)
Mac.

Kitchen floors are fun!

Hi everyone! I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to say Merry Christmas to everyone, and also to let you know what's been going on at Camp Dixie the past couple of weeks.

Actually the past couple of weeks, I haven't spent all that much time at Camp Dixie to be honest. At the end of November I spent a weekend in Louisiana helping out with the Southern District Junior High Youth Gathering. We had about 80 campers at a Retreat Center, and had a ton of fun. It was a great time. After that event, I was home for one day before traveling to Lincoln, Missouri for a National Lutheran Outdoor Ministry event at Heit's Point Lutheran Camp. Heit's Point is an amazing place, it's on an arm of the Lake of the Ozarks, so it is beautiful, beautiful beautiful! They also have some amazing camp buildings, and it's always nice to see a new place.

On the way home from the NLOMA event, I got to experience some winter conditions, and some winter driving. Just a few miles from the camp it started snowing, and as I traveled further south, it started raining/sleeting. By the time I took this picture there was almost two inches of ice that had accumulated on some parts of the front of the truck. The ice never did stick to the roads (the ground was still warm enough to keep it from freezing) but the bridge decks were awfully icy. No worries though, when I got into Arkansas it stopped raining, and by Mississippi it was warm enough for the ice to melt.

Once I got back to Camp Dixie, I found out that some of our volunteers had started working on our floors in the kitchen. On our last kitchen health inspection we lost a couple of points because our floor paint was peeling, and in generally bad condition. In order to get those back we are looking at a new surface for the floor. But first, no matter what we do, we need to remove the original paint that is all over the floor. It seems like an easy task right? I mean we can hardly keep the paint on the floor, it shouldn't be a problem to remove it. Yeah. Right. Actually the paint is quite a pain to remove from the floor. After several days of work, we've managed to get the main kitchen area clean, as well as the fry room in the back. We've got some great ideas on how to make the job happen more quickly now however (can you say diamond tipped cutting blades?) So it shouldn't be a problem. Everything should look great for the upcoming retreat season.

Well that's about it for now,

See you at camp!
Mac