February 11, 2011 – The Woodlands, Texas – The local CBS affiliate station – Channel 11 News – visited the epic Creative Co-Op and did a story on the project which was aired on the 5:00pm news in Houston today. Brad Woodard, a reporter for the station interviewed Vic Cherubini, President of epic software along with Mike Huffine, who is a future tenant of the building. “Our project is beginning to attract quite a bit of media attention,” said Cherubini. “People…
February 13, 2011 - Yes, it is Sunday morning, but Danny the framer and his crew need to get this job completed so they can move onto another one that kicks off tomorrow. After a long drought in the construction market, the guys are hungry for work, and take it as it comes. At 7:55am the sound of their compressor filled the air and ten minutes later you could hear their nail guns finishing the framing work they started just the day before. It started off cool this morning, but by mid-day we were…
February 10, 2011 - The roof trusses arrived today which was exciting and scary at the same time. These trusses were built in Dallas and shipping them was delayed twice due to unseasonable ice storms (remember the Super Bowl?) that hit our area. We thought there would be a third delay (again because of icy road conditions), but we got a call at 6:00am from ProBuild (truss manufacturer) letting us know the truck was leaving their yard. When they arrived, the trusses were bigger and heavier than I…
February 4, 2011 - The week started off nice and warm, but a "norther" blew in on Tuesday and the weather turned very cold. The heaters we purchased a couple of weeks earlier allowed us to get interior work done on the flooring and the studs up in containers 7, 8 & 11, as well as the installation of most of the windows. Our trusses were scheduled for delivery on Friday, but the manufacturing plant in Dallas was closed due to an ice storm. We are hoping to get the trusses early next…
January 28, 2010 - We met with several framers and decided to go with Danny Spann. Danny had a good price, but it was his attitude that sold me. Building a commercial building from shipping containers is filled with challenges, and I have found craftsman that are excited about solving them are the best ones to deal with. Danny looked at our drawing and questioned how we were planning to affix the roof trusses to the containers. We were planning to use angle iron and a 4"…
January 19, 2011 - Since the job began, we have been working with a portable diesel generator. It is loud and stinky and we were limited to where we could work by the length of the extension cord on 220V welder. On some days we also used a gas generator which made things twice as loud and stinky. These generators will only let you use120V or 220V, but not both at the same time. We typically used the generator for the 220V, and ran extension cords from the epic studio for the 120V hand…
January 14, 2011 - This week we just about finished cutting out all of the common walls (only one more wall to go)! With the common walls removed, we needed to add 2" x 2" x 1/8" steel columns to support the floors and ceilings. It is amazing how "bouncy" the center of the floors between the containers are when the walls are removed. We had been using Triple S Steel for our red iron, but decided to look around and found another source (on Craigslist) that saved…
January 20, 2011 - The weather turned cold this week (for Houston anyway) with morning temperatures dipping down in the low 20's. The rain didn't help matters. We used window tape to seal the tops of the containers, and used the same tape inside to seal the openings between containers. We bought some small propane heaters that are used atop 20 pound propane bottles and that made things a little warmer. We turned containers 9&10 into a workshop which helped to keep things organized. …