LOOK Kids!! COMICAZI!!

Well as most of you have surmised – or knew! – the changes I have hinted at the past few weeks here and in other places have now come to pass.  The Davis Square location has been remodeled.  This idea was born last summer in a conversation that I had with Tim Finn.
Or I should more rightly say that conversation was the final catalyst in propelling the remodel forward.  The thought of rearranging things had entered our minds here before but there was always something else happening.  And friends of the shop made suggestions as well.  But after that talk with Tim, I drew up a basic floorplan and floated it to Bob and Dave.

And now 8 months later here we are!!  The new look Comicazi!!  It’s a lot more open and trades are the spotlight.  Bob, Dave, and I worked our butts off for 2 and a half days to be ready to open this past Wednesday.  And we did to positive reviews!
There’s still a ton of work to get done but that will have to happen over the course of the next few days and weeks.  All the big things are in place and it looks good.  I’d like to thank Tim for the conversation and ideas last summer and these stalwart souls for helping out the past couple of days:  Aaron, Frank, Gary, and Matt Lennon.

Here are some photos of the destruction and construction that ensued:

Thanks again to everyone who helped out and was encouraging and to Bob and Dave for all of their hard work.  We’re trying hard to make Comicazi a place for you!

Comicazi Mike

For those of you have been keeping track, I have been posting construction updates for the store room in the back at Comicazi Prime since the beginning of August (yes it really has been that long, and for Bob and I it FEELS even longer).

Well as most of you know 10/16 marked our grand opening sale event and I am glad to say that lots of you turned up to show your support, and many of you walked away with plenty o’ booty.

Anyway I thought I would take a moment to give you some before and after pics.

Check it out, before…

and after…

Also, this…

became…

We are proud of it, now just make sure you find out when we are going to crack open the store room for our next bargainfest.

Later

D

It was the task that we had dreaded for a while, but it is officially done.

Huh? I thought you had already done those?

Nope, there was still one left, the proverbial elephant in the room as it were.

You guessed it, loading all the long boxes of books into the new store.

200 boxes at approximately 40lb a pop… that is about 8000lb, or in plain English a staggering 4 tons!

That still means nothing to you? Well a 2009 Toyota Corolla weighs in at 2745lb, which means we lugged almost 3 cars up a spiral staircase from the basement just for you!! I hope you appreciate us 

A huge shout out to the folks that helped…

A.V.

Gary

and Bernie (who showed up after the work was done, but had some colorful language to entertain us as we cooled off).

So there you have it.

See you soon with the final part of our construction saga.

Later

David

A lot has happened since I last wrote, but I figured I wouldn’t overwhelm you with too much stuff. After all, how interesting is this really? Don’t answer that.

So major announcement #1… the floor is done!

I can’t even tell you how relieved I am. It was quite gruelling work, but all in the past now 

Once that was done we built the shelving for the back issues to go on.

We used all of our lefover 2by4s, see Comicazi is green even if we do have plastic bags. I think we should be getting a Christmas Card from Home Depot at this point.

A quick count in the basement, and it turns out that we have a little over 200 hundred long boxes. That is well over 50,000 comics! And something to bear in mind, these are boxes that have been untouched for 5-6 years now so there is treasure to be found in there for sure. Who wants first crack at them when we have our grand opening sale? Stay tuned.

Back to the work…

Next task was to close the last of the holes in the wall.

Now you see it, now you don’t.

The only way in and out now is through our own door – yay!

Before I close out you can see that we also pulled up well over 100 boxes of toys. Cleaned them off and put them out ready for you all to buy, buy, buy!

The next installment will be ready and waiting for you later this week so see you soon.

And just to tide you over until then here is a little video clip. For those of you who follow us on Facebook or Twitter (me anyway) you got to see this a couple of days ago. So if you haven’t done so already sign yourself up, we are planning a bunch of super secret deals that will only be for those who are involved.

We are now at a point where all of the hours put into this project appear to be bearing fruit.

Over the past couple of days we have emptied the room out in readiness for finishing the floor. So we spent a while sweeping… and then sweeping again… and then sweeping again… and then sweeping again… jeez does this floor GROW dust or something? I don’t know, but it does seem that no matter how much you sweep you never seem to get it all.

Call in the shopvac, that should work right?

Well I will say it did get a bunch more dust, but after a while I think the filter raised the red flag and said, “enough!”

Bob and I bounced it on the ground for a while and then booted it back and forth a bit. Each time it released a big cloud of dust (reminiscent of Pig Pen). Alas it was never to be the same, I guess we will have to go to Home Depot to get another one.

So here is an overview of the room as it stands.

Ooooo…

Aaaaahhhh…

And for comparison…

I think the difference is quite noticeable 

For the observant ones among you, you probably noticed some toys up on the wall.

That may seem odd, but there is a method to our madness. You see the basement where all of our inventory has been stored for the past couple of years is grimy to say the least. So the stuff down there was in need of a serious clean before we could think about putting it on the shelves. Therefore it seemed to make sense to bring up the dusty dirty boxes before we gave the floor its final cleaning. Genius!

Just to pique your interest, here is a quick glimpse of things to come.

See you soon.

D

Today’s entry is all about goo.

Sticky, nasty… and yes mysterious goo.

As I mentioned in the last installment we found a large patch of the stuff on the floor when we pulled up the rug. Now you get to see what I was talking about.

We had done some scraping at this point, but you can clearly see how deep it is. Even tough we had gone down about half an inch we still hadn’t hit the wood of the floor.

I don’t want to spend too much time describing how nasty it was, but let’s just say this… you wouldn’t want it on your floor that’s for sure.

Anyway, all told the two of us spent a total of 8 hours scraping away. In the end it was the combination of a heat gun, a really good scraper, isopropyl alcohol and lots of elbow grease that got the job done.

Ok I know it still looks like crap but it is a million times better than it was at the start.

All told we removed almost 30 pounds of goo.

For those CSIs among you who are dying to know what the goo really is we can give you samples. I myself don’t really care, I am just glad it is gone.

See you soon for the next update.

David

So remember when I last gave an update on the progress? I talked about finishing walls and hanging slotwall, and then I finished with…

Yes… the scary looking door! It had to go so you would all be able to come in and out.

Just so you know how bad it was I took some other pics.

Huh? Oh, the arrow is pointing to the door frame where you can see a hole all the way through to the outside… sweet!

Or even how the door is just resting in the hole supported by insulation foam and random pieces of wood. Secure right?

So we all agree that the old door had to go.

Step one, remove old door without the building collapsing.

Check…

Put the new door in… yes I know there isn’t an open hole yet.

Well that is because the old door was just resting in the hole, and the doorway was actually just blocked by wooden boards. Quality 

Now we head outside…

At first the door looked legit but then we discovered that it was just a metal sheet nailed over some wooden boards. This just gets better and better.

Once we took those out… and… daylight!

Special thanks to Rich by the way, he drove all the way from western Mass to help out. Where were the rest of you? No beer? No snacks? Nuthin!

Anyway, we now have our very own door.

Just so you can compare.

We were relieved to be done and figured it would be plain sailing from there… WRONG!

Next step was to finish the floor, so I pulled up the strip of carpet by the door. This rapidly changed from an easy one-person task to one where Bob and I were both fully exerting ourselves trying to pull the sucker up. Yay!

So why was it so difficult?

How about this…

The this was actually a mysterious black substance, very sticky, oh yeah and it smelled like it was made of some kind of sugar. Any ideas? No, we didn’t either, but what we did know was that it covered an area about 6′ by 4′ and was 3/4″ deep in places!! Fantastic.

See you soon for the next gripping installation.

David

You thought we had just quit right? Wrong!

Just because I haven’t posted an update doesn’t mean that we haven’t been working hard to make Comicazi better for you.

The walls are all built now and it has been slotwall madness the past couple of days.

and let me tell you… that is some hard work. Holding sheets of slotwall 10′ in the air is no mean feat.

But the work was essential, our plan is to have every item in our inventory out and ready for your to rummage through. So that is lots of toys and close to 200 long boxes of comics that haven’t seen the light of day in years.

I am certain everything will fit

This weekend we tackle our biggest challenge…

THE DOOR!

Feel free to drop by with snacks, drinks or just plain old moral support 

Stay tuned

David

The work coninues and we are delighted that the temp, and especially the humidity have dropped 

We cleared out more debris and also patched a few more holes… oh yeah and we spent another hour or two trying to neaten up the ceiling.

The biggest change though since last time is

We now have lights, YAY!

The work was completed by Bob Weber. He is a long time sub and also a licensed electrician. You can pretty much credit anything electrical at Comicazi to him. So if you need any work doing we can highly recommend him. Even Mike at his snarkiest would still have mostly good things to say 

So what’s left?

We still need to do a little more painting, all the finish work on the floor, complete the walls… and replace the door – urgh!

Stay tuned

David

It was all about the ceilings today.

So Bob and I lugged in our monster ladder from Comicazi-West and got cracking.

Here is an ‘almost’ before shot:

I say almost because to get to this stage we spent a few hours removing all of the loose paint that was hanging down. Pretty grim right?

I couldn’t take too many pics once the painting had started though. For one I had paint all over me, the other reason was there was just too much paint mist floating around in the air.

And, yes, before you ask I did get lots of white boogers 

Anyhoo here is a pic that shows you a section with a side by side for comparison.

All in all I went up and down that pesky ladder probably 50 times and we ripped through about 5 gallons of some premium white.

Stay tuned for more pics of the painted walls and finished ceiling.

Later

David