This was a fun one. Chain restaurants are great repeat customers for us because they tend to revamp their restaurants every couple of years and the Machine Shed is no different. This restaurant is located in Waukesha just outside of Milwaukee and is a high volume store so when they decide to remodel the lobby to the restaurant it creates some interesting situations.
The sign was made of 1/8″ steel with a taper at the edges and powder coated with a matte finish. The mounting studs on the back of the letters were welded to the face of the letters then finished with a flat primer so they won’t oxidize. Each letter weighted about 1# and had razor sharp edges which made mounting it a delicate process.
Our install time was 6am on a Thursday morning which is the slowest time in the morning for this store. The main entrance had been closed because of the tile work on the floor so this was the perfect time for us to get in there and make some noise. We started with a standard template but because the substrate we were mounting it to is corrugated instead of flat, it made the template pretty much useless. We found that by cutting the template apart after taping it to the wall we could use a punch to locate the exact position of the stud on the wall. The punch left only a very small mark on the wall while giving us a dimple to start the drill in. It also stopped the drill bit from skating on the metal wall. After drilling about 150 holes in the wall we started mounting the letters. Each letter got a dap of construction adhesive on the mounting stud and at a point where the letter touched the metal wall. Just a little extra insurance that the letters were not going to move. Once we finished the installation, we started to clean up. We brought along a cordless vacuum which really paid off when we had to clean up the metal shards from where we drilled into the wall. I would not have wanted to clean those up by hand.
If you have the need for a customer wall sign for your restaurant please give us a call. We work with a great number of materials and can fabricate a wall sign for you. Please give us a call at 262.289.9481 or email us at info@optimumsignswi.com.
