My second espresso machine restoration

After finishing my first Linea in July, I sold it to Top Gun Roasters in San Luis Obispo. It was a basically a wash but I managed to learn how the machine works and what the pitfalls are for the thing. I realized I didn't need a 3 group machine for small cafe and the even a moderately busy cafe seemed unlikely to really need anything more than a 2 group machine. Water Ave. Coffee was fairly busy and using a 2 group Synesso which was more than adequate for the task. I think designing a good work flow helped too. I notice they designed their bar to be low, at an average person's waist height, which I liked because the barista feels closer to the customer. They also had the cashier pour the milk in the steaming pitcher and set the cup with saucer for the barista to make the drink. This work flow seemed to work out since they didn't have a ticket screen for the barista.
With this in mind, I found another old Linea on craigslist and went to pick it up at Four Barrel Coffee in SF. It was not in good shape though as it had a bad control board and the body had taken a beating. I got it home and began disassembling it and found it had was worse than I thought as the brew boiler had been modified by welding bolts to the tank. Not unfixable though. I decided to powder coat the outside and add the latest control board and touch pads which would also give me pre-infusion. At first I wanted to go with a light blue/green like turquoise color with bright orange cups. This turns out to be a bad idea for now as finding good cups which are also orange is nearly impossible. So I looked around for inspiration and found this.

I decided to make the base a root beer flake and the top a carmel crema color, and use white or red cups. It should look really cool but not unsual or flashy. I dropped the parts off at the powder coating company NRI near the SF airport early this week. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Updates will come as it is finished....