Pinehurst Safeway remodel week 2: Still zipping along

It's time for another weekly remodel update at the Pinehurst Safeway! As you can already see here, the remodel is still progressing quite quickly, though perhaps not quite as crazily fast as over the past week. Anyways, it's a rather strange to see the new decor going up with the old paint still on the walls!

Speaking of paint, there were a bunch of pieces of paper taped up on various bits of wall, identifying the paint color for the walls. Apparently, the deli is being painted "svelte sage 058" (paint color names are always amusing!).

Somehow, one of the old wall pictures ended up propped up against a window in the bakery, which gives a sense of how big (I'd guess 4'x4') these things really are! This one is solid plywood too, not the foam that a lot of wall decor apparently is, so it seems a little iffy to have it just leaning on the wall here, right above where people are grabbing bread. I know I've mentioned it before, but it's always fascinating to me just how big signs are compared to how they look -- this one, for example, is a fairly normal freeway sign that is a little bigger than my old apartment! (Those numbers on the back are dimensions in feet.) Washington doesn't even use particularly big signs compared to some places -- I've seen some in the southeast that are bigger than my parents' house!

Looks like we've got a bit of a jigsaw puzzle in progress over in the bakery! It's interesting to see how the original paint and decor-scars were left intact when the new decor was installed -- whenever this store gets remodeled again, this should show up again. (I was hoping something would show up under the decor when the Ballard store was remodeled, since its original decor is still a mystery to me, but no luck.)

The pharmacy and meat department both have their new signs fully installed, again with the old paint still all around them. As nice as this decor package is, you can see here how these remodels seem to be a bit of a cheapening of the overall store design -- not only has the decorative vinyl floor been replaced with boring white vinyl (my absolute least favorite type of store flooring), but all the can lights and spotlights around the perimeter (a distinctive feature of the Lifestyle decors) are in the process of being replaced with plain rectangular fixtures. If the handful of newer ceiling tiles are an indication, the nice two-tone beige ceiling may well get swapped out for boring white as well.

On the back side of the deli island, it looks like the contractor was getting ready to install the new sign for the liquor department -- but for some bizarre reason, they are putting it just off center from the cut-through aisle, so that it will be partially but not fully visible from across the store. I suspect that it's centered on the wall, but in this case it would look so much better if it was centered in the actionway instead! I really don't get what it is with Safeway in these current remodels and failing to center things in a reasonable manner...

Weirdly, on the left side wall, one small section of wall had been repainted in green, while the rest hadn't. Even more strangely, the new lighting here is a different style than in the rest of the store, with the old-fashioned "eggcrate" covers that I thought went out of style a while ago.

The front end is starting to look almost complete, with the front wall painted and sporting a new Guest Services sign. I know, I'm talking about the lighting way too much today, but it looks rather strange up here with the original 2x2 lights mixed in with all the new 2x4 fixtures! And there are still random can lights and spotlights mixed in with both of those for some reason.

Anyways, that's it for this week. Since next week is a 3-day weekend, there may or may not be an update.