Another delightful endeavor with the venerable Stanmeyer family.
This was a challenging and exciting project, with only two months to turn this decrepit 1839 structure previously a realty office into a coffeehouse and gallery, and bring everything up to ultra-stringent commercial building and accessibility codes.

Interior partitions were knocked down, floors were gutted and re-sheathed with tongue and groove plywood, and a new handicapped accessible bathroom framed. A new Pine floor was installed to match some existing flooring that remained in the back wing.

Two structural columns were removed and replaced by LVLs to open up the flow, one of which doubles as the blackboard menu above the bar.

The piece de resistance in this project was the construction of a nifty set of coffee bar cabinets with a radius’d bow front and wormy maple countertops. The cabinets house the only Modbar (http://modbar NULL.com/)espresso system in New England, in addition to a Hobart commercial dishwasher, icemaker, three refrigerators and two sinks. Very thorough planning and layout was of the essence here.

All the wiring was redone with a new 200amp service installed to meet the needs of all the new appliances. All the plumbing was required to be replaced with cast iron drainwork and copper vent pipes – no plastic allowed for commercial buildings!

On the exterior, we were greeted with the surprise of a caving-in bulkhead structure. Half of the existing concrete was gutted, new formwork built and the upper walls and top three steps re-poured and pinned into the lower walls. A new  Bilco door was installed.

I cladded all the ailing finger-jointed or otherwise punky windowsills in copper, and installed copper gutters.

This is now a beautiful place to hang out and home to the best coffee in the area and some breathtaking photography from around the world. Stop by check it out!

Stanmeyer Gallery & Shaker Dam Coffeehouse
2 Main St. West Stockbridge