Original schedule slippage prevented the sculpture's true completion before the Park's opening in July, 2004. Although most of the sculpture's inaugural visitors assumed Cloud Gate was finished there remained one last, arduous stage in its development.

To fully realize Anish Kapoor's vision for this work all of the major surface seams need to be eliminated with welds and painstakingly polished to become invisible on the surface. In January, 2005, following the holiday season, work began on this final stage of completion. To establish a weather-protected environment for this work a temporary fabric enclosure (the "Bean Barn"), similar to the one used during original construction, was erected over the sculpture. This construction, chronicled in this gallery, provided some interesting image opportunities which will not likely be repeated for a very long time, if ever.