Ready to re-open!

The re-location process of our My Gym started last Monday afternoon and we worked all day everyday until late Sunday night to be able to have Memorial Day off and then re-open for business on Tuesday, May 31st. On Friday, we signed the construction completion form for the new facility and handed over the keys of our old space for them to start demo/construction over there tomorrow. I never thought I would be so sad to walk out of the place that made me the youngest My Gym owner (so far), but I was overjoyed to walk 11 doors down and open the door to our brand-new, dream come true My Gym. It's OURS... it's FREE! Talk about flipping a business. :) We are so blessed and excited for all of our customers to see our hard work and start telling their friends about My Gym!

Ta Da!!!

artwork

artwork

My dad happened to be working out here the week we moved, and he helped hang my product wall (a.k.a. The Money Wall). I really like how it turned out! We are selling Melissa & Doug puzzles and toys along with some My Gym T-shirts, frisbees and sippy cups.

Our storage room is the one place we did put some of our own money into this project. I wanted to take the opportunity to really organize everything and make the most out of all the space we had. All the cars and worms hanging above the swings used to be a mess on a shelf, taking up so much room and making it very difficult to easily use and put away during classes. Since we bought everything in time, the construction workers still installed it for us. I love me some organization!

And then there were 5...

We just hired another staff member who will start with us in our new facility. She is currently going to college out of state and is just home for the summer, but that is only the time-frame that we need help. She will just be an assistant teacher and work a lot of Summer Camp shifts (we won't train her to work birthday parties). Her interview was last Thursday and she came in for a staff meeting today. Dustin has been with us for a year and Jill has been with us for 6 months, so hopefully Liz will still click with all of us these next 3 months. After tomorrow morning's shift, our staff will be off for a week while we move the gym. Below are the most updated pictures of the new space.

Lobby carpet (instead of tile).

The blue rug is only there while workers are in and out.

Hallway and bathroom tile


We now have a water fountain
instead of a water dispenser
(no more buying cups!)



The bathroom
(the white is a "splash guard")

Last Friday, all the floors were done, poles were painted white, and the 2nd coat of paint went on the walls.

Change of Plans

Plans have to be expected to change when dealing with construction. We were planning on closing Wednesday, May 24th and be open on Wednesday, June 1st. However, we are not on schedule - we are AHEAD of schedule. We will now be closed Tuesday, May 23rd - Monday, May 30th and be open in our new facility on Tuesday, May 31st! All the equipment will be moved, and then the inspections should be done by Friday, May 26th. We will have plenty of time over the Memorial Day weekend to organize the office and storage room, hang signs and photos, "decorate" the bathroom, etc. It's getting close!

Day 1 of Painting (5/17/11)

Back hallway

Bathroom door

Ceiling completed

Day 1 of Carpet (5/18/11)

...waiting for the putty to dry, be sanded and painted again

Update Part 2

We were up at 5:30 this morning to head to work WAY early to meet with the construction company before they started work. We met with the "head guy" who is there everyday, and we purposely delayed the other two workers who were there just as early to start putting up the walls around the swing support system poles. All the drywall materials were there, too. After about a 15min conversation, the two workers were told to start on another project. The new walls were nixed! We just needed to figure out the logistics of this huge change... and that was more complicated than we thought. The construction company are not going to be able to credit anything to our account to go towards the square padding we now need. Their argument is that they still had to pay the two workers for an all day shift, it'll cost for someone to come pick up the unused supplies, and the restocking fee of the supplies is no where near the price you pay for them. They said it'll pretty much be a wash. We went ahead and purchased the padding today, with a special My Gym discount. They were just under $700. We would like to see if the construction company/our landlord will negotiate with us on the actual moving costs. We are willing to move most of our equipment and put in some more hard labor for them to cover the padding cost. If they are not willing to adjust the budget or negotiate something, $700 is a lot out of our bank account, but it's not a lot for a free $75,000 brand-new location. I'm at peace about the decision either way because this new design is going to open up the gym so much more and be a lot easier to work around everyday (rather than cut-out walls indenting into the gym floor). The only thing I'm worried about is the arrival time of the 4 custom-made pads for the poles. Best case scenario, they will arrive the day of or day before we re-open. Worst case scenario, we will be open for a few days without the padding, and we'll have to come up with a creative set-up with our current equipment to protect the kids from the 4 inch metal poles that will be around the play area. Needless to say, we won't let this construction change push back our moving date. We will be closed May 25th - 31st to move and then open in our new space on Wednesday, June 1st. We really cannot wait!

New Location Update

Week of May 2nd:

The steal beams were delivered Wednesday.

This picture also shows how close we are moving from where we are now down in the corner (only 11 doors down).

Space Flight pole
(we brought in the padding to make sure it fit)

Swing support system is finished

Closer look at the swing support system

(it'll be covered by ceiling tiles soon)

On either side of the swing support system, there are two steal poles holding it up. They are bolted to the ground and bolted and welded in the ceiling. We have this same structure in our current space, but they are hidden behind a 6 inch cut out wall. The blueprints of the new space say that the walls to cover these poles will be 8 inches. We went in the new space Friday night once everything was complete, and we were frustrated that the measurements were off. The poles are too far away from the wall to be covered by only an 8 inch wall - it's going to take a 2 foot wall. When the construction company told us that the walls were going to be a little bit bigger than the ones we currently have, we never imaged it would go from 6 inches to 24 inches! We emailed our construction contact over the weekend and have set up a 7am appointment with them tomorrow (Monday) morning before any work starts. The drywall and everything to build the walls is already in the space ready to be started tomorrow. With seeing how much a 2 foot wall will 1. eat into the gym floor space, 2. be really hard to set-up our equipment around and 3. not be safe (kids could run into a 2 foot cut out wall, we have decided we rather have a padding around the 4 poles (like the space flight pole) rather than the walls. We hope that the construction company will pay for the padding since their measurement mistake it really wrong. We also hope that this doesn't effect the estimated move date (set to start on May 25th to be re-opened on June 1st). This isn't the first hic-up (they didn't order enough lobby carpet), so we hope that they are completely fine with our change of plans (and that they ordered enough gym floor carpet for us eliminate that walls). We'll keep you posted...