When Memphis restaurants closed their eat-in service to follow pandemic rules, just about all of them got a good scrubbing. Some are also getting a fresh look.

At Boscos, it’ll look like a new place, except for the bar.

Some restaurateurs are ready to open, some say no way

“It’s such a nice bar I don’t want to mess with it, but we’re putting charging stations underneath,” said owner Andy Feinstone.

“We have a new paint scheme throughout, getting a new roof, renovating the sunroom,” he said. “We’re upgrading the restrooms with new tiles, new partitions and making it touchless. We have a new color scheme everywhere.”

The coronavirus downtime spurred a flurry of projects around town. At Erling Jensen, the bar and the small dining room to the right of the entrance were already being expanded before the COVID-19 shutdown.

“So it was kind of good and kind of bad,” Jensen said. “It took some pressure off those workers, not to have me yelling at them to 'come on, come on’ every day, so maybe they slowed down a little bit. But also, we were able to get the work done without it bothering anyone. Now it’s almost ready except for some lighting.”

An exterior wall was knocked down, and the bar and the front room both doubled in size by taking in the former patio and one parking place.

At Tsunami, Ben Smith and his crew have been hard at work.

“We took all the seating and tables out of both dining rooms and we painted the floors for the first time in 22 years,” he said.

The concrete floor in the south dining room looks like a smooth inky pool, and the main dining room will match before Smith reopens at a date still undetermined.

“It looks good. Like a lot of other people, we’re taking advantage of this downtime and having the empty dining rooms has enabled us to do a real deep clean, too,” Smith said.

“It’s important when people come back that they see we haven’t just been idly sitting around. They’ll think, ‘they’re open, they’ve been adapting and by damn, they’ve made the place look nicer in the meantime,’ ” he said.

For Mother’s Day brunch, here are some options to dine in or out

Ben Brock, of Char and Amerigo, mused early in the shutdown that construction companies could make a killing if they would work for restaurants that could pay them after they reopened. Chances are slim many were willing to do that, but Brock went about business another way.

He found employees who knew how to do light construction work and they got to it at his restaurants. At Amerigo, open for 23 years now, they did extensive work.

“We sanded and stained all the wood, then we sanded our floors,” he said. “That led to us having to completely clean out our HVAC and refrigeration systems, because of all the particles — sanding floors is messy work.”

More than 200 chairs were sanded and stained, everything was painted, all the equipment was pulled out and power washed, kitchen floors regrouted.

“Everything is perfectly clean,” he said.

Memphis artist Mark Davey texturized and painted the walls when Amerigo opened in 1997, and he came back to touch up. Except for him and a professional to stain the floors, everything was done by the restaurants’ employees.

“My chef from Char is putting polyurethane on tables right now,” Brock said on Wednesday.

At Char, everything was steam-cleaned, chairs were stained and work was done around the bar. Right now, Brock plans to open both restaurants May 11.

Jensen is uncertain when he’ll open — maybe late May, perhaps early June. Before he reopens, he’ll have a crew in to sanitize everything.

Same with Feinstone, who is hoping to reopen May 18, but has one consideration beyond possible spikes or construction delays:

“We’re brewing fresh beer,” he said. “We have to have our beer ready.”