Building Fuel Road House Part 1

We knew we were going to move into a big empty space and had a blank canvas to play with. So when designing the interior we decided to divide it up into a number of distinct areas. These included a merchandise shop, a bar, a soft seating area to relax in, a dining area with 80 covers, and a sim racing area.

Also with the budget quite tight and the fact we were building it all ourselves, the concept had to be simple to build yet have a big visual impact, so clever use of materials and cladding was the order of the day.

We kicked off the build with Olly and Mick fabricating the food counter and extending the wall in the kitchen to allow for more workspace in there.

We have allocated a fairly large footprint for the shop as we plan to design and sell a large range of our own products as well as a select number of other well know and local automotive lifestyle brands. We have become an official Motorcycle Storehouse stockist and so will be stocking brands such as Roeg, Carhartt, and American Socks to name a few.

Olly and Mick have started to build the merch shop and bar, one restriction we have in place is that we are not allowed to screw anything into the existing structure of the building apart from the 2ft high wall that runs around the building and the floor. It’s got to be able to be removed easily a bit like a pop-up shop. We designed the whole concept with that in mind.

With the structure of the bar and shop now up the mammoth painting session has started. Luckily we had a number of helpers turn up to give us a hand. Thanks to Vas, Rich, Paul, Dave, Kas, Gav, Kyle, Big Al, Rids and anyone else I have forgotten, it was a thankless task as it took a solid 5 weeks of painting and prep work. Unfortunately, I didn’t get too many shots of this as I was busy painting.

We went with a dark gray throughout to match the building’s structure and Fuel Coffee House. We also used a dark green in the soft seating areas on top of wooden paneling to give it a touch of class making it feel like a private members club.

Olly and Mick have started to fabricate the wooden paneling that will be fixed to the low wall that runs around the soft seating area to give it an upmarket took.  We have also purchased 150 8ft lengths of used scaffold board and have sanded them all back a little. We are going to use them as cladding around the interior that the local art will be hung on.

We also used patinated corrugated steel sheets to clad around the whole kitchen counter area, carrying on with a similar industrial theme we have in Fuel Coffee House.

The Fuel Wall proved to be an integral part of Fuel Coffee House, with everyone loving getting an official photo of their car, bike, or horse outside of Fuel with the hope of it making it onto the Fuel wall. Well you will be happy to know that Fuel Road House will also have its very own Fuel Wall, seen here being fabricated by Olly and Mick.

To tie both the bar and the store together visually both were designed to incorporate birch ply cladding stips. We went a step further with the store and created a shed like structure giving it a distinct look and area.

With any big wide open interior space, the challenge is creating areas that still feel cozy. To help achieve this we designed hanging ceiling grids that visually bring the ceiling height down over the areas where the sofas are going to be sitting, much like we did at Fuel Coffee House. We will then hang Edison-style lights from them.

Mick fabricated these out of timber and plastic coasted mesh, then painted them all black

Continuing with the build not bought theme at Fuel Road House, we decided to design and built all the tables and benches. We brought in the big guns, Big Al and Rich from our sister company Golding Barn Garage to weld the steel box sections together. With Olly spending a full day cutting all the sections to size and Pete sanding the scaffold board. Kyle and Al then lacquered them all.

When we first moved in the floor had grey office carpet tiles, they had to go, replaced with 100kg of hardwearing Grey Resincoat Epoxy floor paint.

First of all we prepped the floor using a diamond disc sander getting rid of all the carpet tile glue, then we painted the epoxy paint over the floor using some large rollers, I have to say big thanks to Rich for helping us with this, it was a job and a half.

Rich and Mick have fitted all the hanging lights. We went with Edison-style (like Fuel Coffee House) dimmable hanging lights to give us the flexibility to adjust the brightness in each area to set the mood.

With the blog post getting too lobng please head over to part 2 here