Recently got a nice ‘vacation’. The outfit I work for was building a new restaurant at a lakeside hotel in my town (Penticton, BC), and they needed someone to help with the finishing work. As it happened I was pretty much between projects, waiting for permits on a new big box store, so I got to go back on the tools full time for 8 weeks. I spent two of those in the shop and the rest on the site with an apprentice.

The restaurant is built out over the water on piles carrying a suspended slab. There are some bearing concrete exterior walls with the majority of the structure being steel carrying curved glulam beams. It would have been interesting work, but must have been very tedious doing so much of it from rafts and boats. Eventual final cost ran almost $3 million CDN. Pretty expensive way to build as it is only 3000 SF footprint – 80 seats inside, 80 seats on deck. But the views up Okanagan Lake will be worth it. Local and visiting boaters will love it I’m sure.

I had extensive on site work to do, mostly the board and batten feature walls which were 1/4″ veneer ply over drywall. The battens were 1×2 vertical grain fir at 3″ centres. That’s a lotta lotta wood! The lighter coloured veneer work above the kitchen used fewer battens but was just as time-consuming because of all the notching around beams and scribing up into the curved ceiling.

Masterminding the whole project was cabinetmaker Ernie Fehr. He pre-fabbed the bar and booth assemblies at the shop and then we put it all together on site and completed veneer and batten work. Also included in the project were bathroom vanities, partitions, chair rails and mirrors, plus baseboards, door trims, shelving and a ton of other miscellaneous stuff.

All in all an enjoyable project – I wish I could get more. Right now it’s concrete concrete concrete again.

Wally