T minus: two months

It's the 17th of August today. The grand opening celebration in scheduled to start in just two months -- and we're opening doors to the public in just 7 weeks. What seemed like an eternity away is now shockingly imminent.

In the past week, the space has assumed it's final shape. The drywall team's work is complete and the interior is now comprised of primer-white, perfectly smooth walls.

Raquel, my designer and I spent four hours yesterday at the Janzten Beach Home Depot, getting the paint mixed. Special thanks to Paint and Customer Service Goddesses Laura and Becca for bearing with our outlandishly complex order. We bought 15 different colors and spent over $1,000 just on paint. Tomorrow morning, the paint crew gets started -- it will take them most of the week to get through it all.

This week, I also purchased the six television sets for the studios. We're going with a 50" plasma for the biggest studio, a 42" for the second largest and 37"ers for the rest. I jumped on a great sale on top-rated Samsung models at Fry's and got them below my budgeted price (a very rare occurrence!) Big thanks to my brother, Steve for helping me haul them around -- and to Scott & Saundra Lennartz for providing their truck for said hauling.

The signs continue to vex. I've decided on the style -- we'll be shooting for an internally illuminated sign using push-through lettering for the logo. Here's an example. Of course, ours will be the Voicebox logo and look much cooler. At night, it will glow similarly to the logo on the top of the webpage.

In other news, Raquel and I selected a sectional couch for the large studio: the Oregon Chaise from Dania.

Also, this week I plan on getting started on my hiring process. Staffing is the last big unknown for me -- I feel like I've researched everything else well enough to take a good stab -- but labor still makes me nervous. As usual, I'm probably over complicating it in my mind, so I'm just going to get started by writing up some job descriptions and seeing where that takes me. I'll run it by my restaurant-management contacts here in town for feedback -- I'd like to start posting ads the first week of September to give myself a month to get people lined up.

Pics are up. Click above or here to go.