It's our lone prep table, and It's going to serve as the main base of operations for the meat grinder and the deli slicer, which will both be used daily. As I've been working through the food, I've been noticing that the table careens wildly when I do anything on it, so I determined that it needed to be attached to the wall.
So, after my 349th trip to Menard's to fetch a pair of heavy duty brackets, I set to work. First thing I needed to do was figure out how to attach the brackets to the table. It wasn't easy, since the table is really just legs with a stainless top and backsplash, so other than the top/backsplash, there's not a whole lot there to attach brackets to. But, in an ideal world, you're not supposed to have screws or bolts sticking out of your seamless stainless work surface, since little bits of food and gook can get lodged in there and the health department doesn't like that. I mean, that's why restaurants use a single, seamless span of stainless steel--it's easy to clean.
But, as we all know, we do not live in an ideal world. And I couldn't figure out how else to attach the brackets, so I lined it up, marked it off, and began drilling through the stainless.
In the midst of doing that, of course, I fielded phone calls ("Hi, we're calling from Ontario about your credit card processing terminal--how you doin' on thermal paper?"), handed out job applications, did a couple brief interviews, tasted a couple different kinds of sausage, and some other stuff I probably forgot completely about by now. (I'm actually composing this post today, Monday, but the table in question was bolted to the wall in question on Friday, so forgive me if I leave out any essential minutiae).
Because it's so busy around here during the day with phone calls, walk-in visits, and such, I'm usually not able to do anything that involves any long-term focus until evening, so around 6 or so, I re-engaged with my bolting a table to a wall project.
Of course, if you've got a table that's going to be bolted to the wall, and you pull it out to attach the brackets, you really will want to do a thorough cleaning behind it, since it's probably the only chance you'll have to really clean back there for a long time. So I did. Cleaned down the walls, deck brushed the floor, lots of de-greaser, squeegeed the whole mess over to the floor drain. Looked great.
Then I scraped all the silicone off the wall and off the table so I would have a nice clean surface to work with. Great. Ready to bolt.
Ok...drilling through stainless steel is difficult. Very difficult. Even with my hammer drill and a titanium bit, each hole still took about 8 minutes of solid drilling to punch through the steel. I had to stop and let the drill cool off a couple times during that process. I've burned out more than my share of drills being impatient.
Then I realized that the screws that came with my brackets were too long and would butt up against each other the way I had the brackets configured, so I had to walk over to the local Ace Hardware (which I can't believe I didn't figure out was only a three block walk until after making dozens of car trips to Menard's/Lowe's/HD) and get some shorter nuts and bolts.
Got'em. Picked up some dinner on the way back, did a bit more drilling, ate dinner while the drill cooled off again, and by 8:00 or so, the brackets were attached to the table.
Mercifully, attaching it to the wall was fairly effortless. I moved it into place, marked spots where I needed to drill, moved it away again, drilled, sunk anchors, then pushed it back in and, zip, zip, zip....the screws went in and the table was suddenly--a mere 12 hours after I started--attached to the wall.
A couple beads of silicone where the table meets the wall and the dish sink, and I was done. Yep, another successful day in the glamorous restaurant biz!
I'd include a picture, but it's a friggin' table bolted to a wall. Not much to look at.
.jpg)
Posts
I just discovered this blog after following a link from your lthforum sig. I read all of the entries from May to now, and am really excited for Enzo's to open! LOVE the name and logo. From someone who works in the industry, it's very cool that you are documenting this process as you go, and it sounds like things are going really well. Can't wait to come try a burger!
Whoops meant to Type EDZO'S in that last comment!
this is great. nice work I'd like to read a bit more concerning this topic. Thanks for sharing such a nice information..