Paint and Body I'm Not Too Happy With Myself Right Now.... >-(

The paint looks great still, it's just the stripes. I took a few pics, then took it out for a little joyride. I can't believe how well it runs now! Even as hot as it was here today (95ish...) it really never went above 195. That part of it all is awesome!! But the stripes really bother me. It might be for the better though, I have a new fiberglass rear bumper that I need painted and installed, so it may not be a big deal if I just have it re-striped at the same time as having the bumper done. I just can't believe how fast it discolored!! I'll try to get the pics uploaded here in a little bit.....

Rear deck stripes...




Roof stripes.....




Hood Stripes.....

It's been a couple of weeks (hell, getting close to a month!) and I've ordered stripes from Graphics Express. They should be here Thursday or Friday. I've also just finished removing all of the Le Mans type stripes from over the car. I found some adhesive remover that is safe for automotive paint and will hopefully get it all done by Saturday. The restaurant is starting to shape up, so I am able to get away more often. I was going to use a local vinyl shop, but time constraints made me order them online. Hopefully I can get it all done before we leave for Myrtle Beach this weekend!!

Ok, I am resurrecting my thread but this time with a different purpose. I installed the stripes over the car in time to take it to Myrtle Beach, but I'm not happy with it. I will try to have the car re-striped AGAIN this summer. But, on to my real rant....

As I stated in the beginning of this thread, we bought a pizza restaurant in the end of May. The best analogy I can relate it to is like buying a "running" car out of a farm field. Yeah it runs, but not very well. With all of the paperwork that we were shown when we bought it, it was shown to be slightly profitable. Combine that with the manager salary who left and it was supposed to bring in about 30-40k per year. It has not. It has cost us double that amount plus some to keep it running from May through the end of the year. We are pretty sure the previous owner lied through his teeth about the place. There are other things besides that that I am not going to get into here right now - it would take me forever to type - but we are in the middle of a law suit with him. The short story is that we weren't able to get the credit card processor switched over for a couple of weeks and during that time he was taking the card payments. He agreed both verbally and through emails and texts that he would reimburse us, which he has not. That is the meat of the lawsuit. He is obviously denying everything and trying to counter-sue for credit card processing fees. If he didn't take our money, how in the hell do we owe him processing fees?!?! Anyway, the bigger deal here is since it is obviously not profitable for us right now, we are going broke. Needless to say we aren't happy, we're stressed out beyond belief. BUT, the bright side of it all and part of the reason we decided to buy the place is that it's MAYBE a mile away from the new Suntrust Stadium and baseball season will be here soon. There is a great deal of potential, but so many hurdles to jump through to get it there. One big hurdle is that the AC for the place doesn't really work. We are supposed to have 2 units on the roof, but when our service men were checking things out after we took over they informed us there is only 1. The landlord then told me that it is our responsibility to replace it. More recently we had a water pipe burst in the wall between our suite and next door. We replaced our water heater a few months ago, so the plumber who installed it, who is also working on the new build 2 suites down, come in to inspect. They found that the empty suite had a water heater that was rusted and thought that it was the culprit. We told the property manager who sent a crew out and found it was the pipe coming from our water heater. It is inside the wall, goes into the floor and it burst maybe 2" above the floor. Of course the property manager/landlord is putting that on us too. Barring our tax return and whatever our lawsuit can/will bring us, we will be out of money in March with about 3 years left on the lease. So much for getting my garage built! Anyway, I am going to shamelessly plug our restaurant and website here. I know that most everyone who is on here don't live in the area, but word of mouth can help anyway. If you or anyone you may know will be in the area, stop by - we will most definitely be grateful for the business!! The pizza is good if you can tolerate the heat for a bit! I am actually thinking of making it a takeout/delivery only restaurant for the summer unless we can get the AC taken care of.....

www.vitosnypizzas.com
www.facebook.com/vitosnypizzas

One more update on our restaurant. It's not looking too good. We have signed on with an outfit that supplies lunches to the surrounding office buildings which is helping, but unfortunately we have had a few hiccups in the past month or so. The first thing was that we went down to just 2 employees just in time for my wife to chaperone a school trip. Since we couldn't open, I took the 2 younger kids and went camping for a week just to get away. While setting up our trailer, I jumped on the back of the truck to release the receiver from the ball. When I did that, the wheel chocks didn't hold the trailer and it caught my good foot, trapping it between it and the truck. Luckily nothing was broken! But I am still healing from that as it sits now. So, the place was closed for almost 2 weeks of the month. I think we finally have enough employees to at least run the place for it's full hours now. The first set of home games for the Braves really didn't show any kind of sales improvement over any other day. The second set of home games showed a slight improvement, but not enough to reach our sales goals. I don't believe there are any home games until next week, so I don't expect there will be a huge improvement over any other week this week, but hopefully next week we will see some improvement. If not, I think we will only be open for one more month and bankruptcy will be imminent. I'm not happy to say the least! Anyway, if anyone has any kind of ties to the Atlanta area, specifically in and around the Marietta area, could you spread the word about our place? It really is pretty good pizza! I would love to figure out a way to host a show or small club! If someone has a car, bring it by - if I'm there, I would love to see or hear about it! I can kind of live vicariously through someone else since I haven't had the time to do much of anything with any of ours for the past year.....

The end of the restaurant is apparently here. About 3 weeks ago or so, our last 2 employees quit on us unexpectedly. The reason: they were going to be evicted because they didn't have quite enough for rent, so they quit as they were leaving the property manager's office. They had nothing lined up for work to the best of our knowledge. It just didn't make any sense to us whatsoever. Anyway, that left the place to just me, my wife and a couple of our kids.

We had to close for the past week as we both had to be out of state, her for personal reasons and I went back to Iowa to see a long time family friend, who we may as well call my other brother. I've known him since birth, his mother and my mother were bff's in school and she was also my Godmother. Anyway, he was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after my accident and has not been doing well for the past few months. He had been hospitalized 4 times in 8 weeks time, 2 of those times with fluid buildup around the lungs and the last time it was also around his heart. I went to see him as I didn't have the warm fuzzies about it so to speak. He is doing well right now, but he will be going back on his chemo soon. Fingers crossed that they can find something to control his cancer.

So, with all of that, the restaurant was closed for the past week and 3 of the past 4 weekends. We are now behind on a few of the restaurant's bills and really see no alternative to closing the place and filing bankruptcy, both business and personal. Fingers crossed that we can find a way to keep everything, including the Mustangs, through all of this BS.