Chinese restaurant into Airbnb/residential tiny budget b

The law isn't clear cut on cleaning. You have to prove (document) that you have safe and effective cleaning methods and regularity. Things like cooker tops, grill drip trays etc are daily. Weekly would be fridges, cookers, grills, fryers (more if high use). Pulling things out should be monthly, I do it as a monthly deep clean.

If everything is done as regularly as it should be it's all upkeep rather than deep cleaning.

Commercial stuff should either be designed to be cleanable, or not have the gaps under/behind in the first place.

There was definitely an element of decline and not caring but also low standards from the offset. Found some paperwork from the health inspector and within it it stated the staff lacked basic food hygiene knowledge.

Back to the clearing out stuff. After clearing bits out that would fit in a bin or a car I was left with the task of the kitchen. For one reason and another this actually took far longer than it should have done. It was big and old and pretty evident that it was built into the kitchen and any chance of selling this off was out of the window. It had to be cut up and scrapped.

Found a guy confident he could get it out in a few trips through the week, he took other commercial kitchens. The deal I had was he took it for free and could weigh in the scrap. A win win with it all gone within a week. This turned into about 6 weeks of taking longer than expected, no shows, excuses etc. I won’t moan any more about that though.

There’s lots of manky grease and stuff to enjoy instead.

This was the starting point. The room is 12x9ft, the hood was 12ft across the entire length of the room. One large wok stove, an oven and stove next to it and the sink. I’m keeping the bench bit for my workshop. So four things in total but due to the grease the stipulation was no angle grinding just for the sake of a fire. If you squint it doesn’t look too bad at this stage.

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First to go was the double bath sized sinks. They went out with little agro, found some of the bad smell was from the plumbing and whatever was lurking in there. Found a tub full of water with noodles and a blanket of mould, an empty pack of chicken and random other grot. There was a wooden rack under the sink impregnated with grease and dirt. Food containers and pans were stored on this.

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That’s put me off takeaway food now…🤮
How do you get rid of that much grease?

On to the main stove. It had this top which you fill with about an inch of water, presumably to catch oil and bits that spit out from frying. When I got there it was still filled with water and growing what I assume was noodles and penicillin, looked like a big Petri dish with random bits of fried matter. It got drained and dried out enough to get cracking on this.

It was a matter of reducing it down and taking weight out. The wok rings went first, the catch pans below clearly hadn’t been emptied in a long time. There was a layer of tin foil in them I presume to make it easier to clean up. I know they did this years ago as they put tinfoil on the outside vent that dripped oil. If the tin foil in the catch pan is as old as outside it was laid down when David Cameron was king.

So this took out some weight but it was still 8ft of bulky mess. Scrappy took out some of the brass and copper burner bits, he made a few quid on that bit, which turned out to be the only valuable part apparently.

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Same, everyone who saw this was horrified, many had eaten here others were glad they hadn’t. One girl who walked in thought there had been a fire it looked so bad.

Reassuringly though, the guy who removed the kitchen and had done a few of the same jobs before, said “oh yeah, they’re all like this”

I’m stripping this room back to bare walls and floor and all the muck is going with it. In some places it was deep enough to scrape away in big lumps.

Nuts thread. Following

Crazy stuff

That’s so many levels of grim.
Many years ago I did a stint at Burger King while doing my degree, 2 cleaners came in after the evening shift and stripped the kitchen bare, the cowls came off the extractors the whole works and this happened after every shift.
The place was spotless.

This takes me back.
BITD I worked for a cleaning firm (abseiling window cleaning) and did an overnight shift cleaning a kitchen on a restaurant boat on the Thames as someone didn’t turn in. It wasn’t too far off this state. I only did it once. I can still smell it now looking at these pictures.

This was the next phase of removing the cooking equipment. Not much to say about it. Cutting and heaving it out. I was marvelling at the muckiness of every new surface that was uncovered. My guess from the clues I’ve found was this was installed pre mid 90s. The lino when I pulled it up had one of the old names of the restaurant written on the underneath. So it was definitely laid before the millennium and had cut outs to fit around the cooking equipment. Either way it’s been there ages and presumably all the residue had been there just as long.

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Along side the dirty work and paper work, occasionally I get to do the more fun stuff such as decor items. Been picking up things as and when I find them and lighting seems to have been fairly easy to find so far.

Always been a fan of the arco lamp and managed to find one about an hour away for a decent price so grabbed it while I could. I want a pair of these so will need to get another. It’s not a real one, just a copy. Chap on seat for scale. It’s one of the best buys so far.

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These kitchen images reminds me when Resident Evil 1 was launched 🚀

Ha. I did this for a while when I was living abroad. Some of the 5 star hotels had kitchens exactly like this. We used to clean the traps and filters with acid. Only stuff that worked. It was utterly grim work. Still have marks from
Acid burns on my arms.