Open House - Let's Curl!!!

Well it's been an exciting weekend...our club has opened, we had our members Open House, 2 sold out Learn To Curls and Leagues started!

So here are a few looks at the weekend...

We had about 50 members come through our Open House to eat, drink and throw rocks into Open Houses. (Sorry, but I had to make sure you got the  pun in the title!)

Sunday's Sold out Learn To Curl...off ice.

...and on ice with some Wisconsin Alumni!

And the Sunday "Fun Day" league started...

It's a nice view from the warm room!

Speaking of the Warm Room...we are now looking for donor(s) to step forward with helping us with the final touch of this long dream--The Look and Feel. Designing the place has been left to our club members that are an Interior Designer and Landscape Architect. They have put a lot of time into the young, hip, industrial look we are going for. Here are the two designs.

Look and Feel A

Look and Feel B (this has pops of color)

So if you can help fund the tables and chairs or the bar in the warm room, it would be greatly appreciated. This is the fun stuff and we want to have more than a blank canvas soon!  Please contact theskip@coyotescurling.com for more information.

Thanks for coming along this journey of building our dream...it started 11yrs ago with one Canadian who moved to the desert and missed curling. Now we can say we are "Dedicated in the Desert" and open for business! Until next time... 

The End Is Just The Beginning!

Yes, we have great news to celebrate...We have our Temporary Occupancy Permit from the City of Tempe!  (Who is jumping up and down with me?!? Wait...we are all sitting or sleeping after 4 months of living and breathing construction, day-in and day-out at our club. Any many of us have day jobs!). It's pretty spectacular that it was done with almost all volunteering!

After many weeks of working on the little things to pass our inspection...

Our "Construction Manager, Foreman, Teacher to all of us," has been working diligently for weeks on end on the ADA handrails.

And many other club members have worked on these as well.

The carpets are going down in the ice house.

Looks nice, eh? We just need to give the carpets a trim.

After repairs were done on the sprinkler system and the dehumidifier turned on, it was time to run the Ice King and sweep the ice before one last flood.

Also during the overnight "Fire Watch," before the sprinklers were fixed, a few of the ladies decided to chip in, donate and build an IKEA ladies locker room to pass their shift from midnight to 6am.  Turned out pretty good for some sleep deprived gals. We even followed the picture instructions with no extra parts (well that were needed). :) Just a few pictures of our ice to hang (from the blog, actually)!

So we can finally draw a line in the sand and say, "THANK YOU, WAYNE!!!" who has been our construction manager spending every night and weekend for the last 4 months to direct the 100 hard working volunteers to take a big blank warehouse and turn it into a four sheet curling club that we like to call "Deadicated in the Desert."

But it's finally here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Original Drawing)

(Reality)

"The ice is really there!"

(Original Drawing)

(Reality)

The first rock has been thrown...

And we will open this weekend!

So stayed tuned for Learn To Curls (there is one this Sunday!), League Play will start next week and we will start working on our "industrial" decor in the warm room (right now it's still drywalled with primer).  And we hope to see all of you out on the ice soon.  Good Curling!

The Never Ending Laundry List

The work continues! All hands on deck to finish up the laundry list to be able to open.

The ADA railings continue to be install.

And the painting continues.

The doors continue to be installed.

Tile patching starts where walls were moved.

In the ice house, the last paint has gone down on the surface.

Everything is in the process of being sealed.

The letters of each sheet and rock boxes were finished.

Logos in...

It's almost time to take out the spray boom to place a fine mist over the ice to prevent the paint from bleeding.  Then it's time to flood!

Ok, and by the end if the night, we still had some fun!

Cleaning House! 4 DAYS UNTIL OPEN

This will be a short post because it's 1:30am and we just finished painting the houses and putting down most of the lines.

It's been an exciting and draining evening painting the last of the houses to stay on schedule to open this Saturday for our All American Bonspiel!

I don't usually use members names because this is a blog about our clubs journey to what we like to call "Dedicated in the Desert." But I have to give a shout out to Karen Tait, who started the club 10 years ago and is our Mother Hen of the club (most of you know her as our amazing Bonspiel Chair), who was the one to grab the ice crew mop and literally "clean house" tonight.

Let me explain...Once the houses are sealed with a fine mist (in the last post), it's time to clean the houses and put a final seal on them 8-10 times with a clean (new) mop head, getting heavier with water each time, then allowing it to freeze and repeating. I don't know why, but it seemed symbiotic and fitting to see her seal the first house on our dedicated ice. We all know that we wouldn't be here without her vision to pull together Canadians to curl in the desert. (A little club history for you.)

We also put in our red and yellow curling stone indicators. Oh, soon we will be able to put our rocks on the ice!

And lines to divide the sheets...pretty cool, eh? No, I'm not Canadian. I just married in. ;)

While we were cleaning house on the ice, a team of volunteers was cleaning house on the front end (of the building).  All of the things were moved out of the common areas to prepare for a cleaning crew coming in the next day or two. The ADA front ramp is near completion along with a new raised ceiling.

We are now down to a laundry list of odds and ends that we are finishing up, like adding doors. It's always fun to come off the ice at the end of the night and see what they've accomplished. (I will have more volunteers in photos next time !)

And our general contractor (head honcho and curler) was putting in an air control system with venting for the ice house until 1:30am with us. It's the little things, right? Little on his list...

At the end of a painting night, it always reminds me of a scene from a big party. And I feel the same way in the morning, exhausted and just want to take the day off!

But we are SO CLOSE to OPENING in 4 DAYS!!! So sleep is at a premium and we are all pushing "hard, hurry hard" until Saturday.  And it's all coming together.

When I took one last look through the viewing windows and my tired eyes tonight, I saw 4 sheets of ice, 8 beautiful, bright and vibrant houses, 2 bright-as-day hog lines, many frozen pieces of yarn dividing sheets and areas, cute felt cut outs of A, B, C, D and little curling rocks, real curling rocks and a broom. And then we shut out the lights using a real light switch instead of the breaker box. Wow, this warehouse has come a long way...until tomorrow, bloggers, when we are one day closer to curling on dedicated ice in the desert!