"Has anyone seen the screwdriver?"

It's been a few days since I wrote our first post but it feels like it'll take a few posts before I begin to get the hang of this. Right now it feels like I have so many ideas on what to write about that it's difficult to decide where to begin. Do I write about the (seemingly?) never-ending renovation we went through to get the café open? Or is it enough that I mention that our renovation project(s) seemed never-ending? [Note: here is where I decided to just keep writing about the renovation -T] They went on for months and months.. we had a few private events, including our own garden party (another topic I'll definitely have to cover!) and even though they were great events they also managed to slow down the seemingly never-ending process of actually opening a café.

Katja was receiving text messages, people were peeking through our windows, knocking on our doors..and whenever we were either carrying furniture in or out..or in again and out again... people would stop us to ask when we were going to open. After a few months of patience, people began to state "you're still not open?"..this was the time I stopped bringing up the café as a topic of conversation with friends... a month or so more and people were begging us to open soon. We really had to remind ourselves what the point of all of this renovation and building was: to open the most wonderful café in Helsinki...and Helsinki had waited long enough! So with several sleepless nights and with an enormous amount of help from friends, we were able to open on Tuesday 18.11.2008 for the first time.

we had some champagne to celebrate the opening of the café and S's birthday

The café has been open now for eight days (yay!!!). So the never-ending renovation project reached a point where we were able to start to serve our wonderful customers - mind you, that does not mean that it has ended. The restroom ceiling structures still need to be built, there's still some paint work to be done, lighting has to be set up above the windows...etc etc etc. All of that will come with time though, now we are directing all of our focus on you! By "you" I'm of course referring to our customers :)

I'm noticing a similar pattern with this blog (though in a microscopic scale!)... I have yet to tell anyone about finally writing the first posts because I want there to be some content here for when the first readers arrive.. but maybe by the next post I'll be brave enough to start passing the link around. Maybe.

I hope to find and share pictures of the renovation process with you. I have none on this computer now, so I'll just have to add them later... I don't need to ask you to be patient, since you're not here yet. Hopefully they'll be up by the time you visit for the first time ;)