Phase 4: It's Di-vinyl

Phase 4 is "rolling out the carpet". It's not red, and I'm not famous, but I was thrilled all the same. It totally doesn't go with the wall color, but both the floor and the walls were an experiment, and if there's a room in our house where things don't match, I'm okay with this being that room.

That window to the left (it's a double set of windows) is where the ventilation is going to go. Right now that's a box fan; eventually it will be a range hood. As of today (this photo was taken in early December) it's still not set up. But hey, the holidays intervened and I still hadn't even *bought* the torch at that point, so it was a bit further down on the priority list.

By now we're almost to the good stuff!

Phases 2 & 3: Grunt Work

Phase 2:

Laying the masonite board, which probably was the hardest actual labor of the studio. This went on top of the existing carpet so I would have some support under the vinyl flooring. Being without the right power tools, we had to cut this stuff by hand. Yeah, that's right! We're totally badass...if you don't count the fact that we nearly killed ourselves doing so and had to take the next couple of days off to recover...

This also shows the color of the walls (bland beige) before we painted. It's the same color that's in most of our house - neutral enough, but what you can't see is the details.. This was a terrible paint job - you could see the drywall tape, and who knows what happened in this room from the previous owners - there were holes in the walls and lots of spackle to "prettify" things up. So our next step was...

Phase 3:

Painting. Which took longer than it should have, because we had so much spackling and sanding to do before Brett deemed the walls smooth enough to paint. I kept trying to convince him that this was just a studio, and the walls were going to be covered with shelves and all, but he was having none of it. The man doesn't tackle a job unless he can do it right, and in the end the walls do look a lot better (even though they ARE covered with stuff, as you'll see). The only thing you can't tell from the photos is how much darker this paint is than the original beige. It looks a lot lighter in the pics.

I was very, very impatient at these stages (and the next one). I like to decorate, and I like to design - jewelry. I actively dislike all the work that goes into getting a place ready to do the things I like to do! I thought I acted fairly patient, though Brett will likely tell you otherwise. One of his favorite phrases is, "You have the patience of a flea." I'm not sure exactly how much that really is, but I suspect it's, um...notsomuch. ~wry smile~

A New Year, A New...Studio!

For the second half of last year, I have been going once a week to what I call the Learning Annex - my friend Delias' house, where she is teaching me the ins and outs of fabrication and soldering. A couple of months in, I started to revisit making bangles (which I did during one of my first Spruill classes, long, long ago). I had soldered a few the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, then came home, hammered them, and then needed to anneal them. And...I couldn't! No torch, no way to do anything with them for another whole week. Well, that wouldn't stand. I went up the stairs to chat with my husband.

"Honnnneeeyy", I said, in my sweetest I'myourspecialwifeandloveyouSOmuch voice, "Can we go shopping on Black Friday?". Now, Brett and I have a pact that we NEVER go out on Black Friday. "Uh, NO", he replied. "How about just to Home Depot?", I said (a little greasing the skids; like every man I know, he has an abiding love for the ol' HD). "No one will be there on Friday!". Brett just gave me one of his eyerolling, "are you crazy?!" looks...but I knew he was on board.

So on Black Friday afternoon (we are not morning people), we trundled out to - not *our* Home Depot, 5 minutes from home, but the big one that was 20 minutes away. Why? Because my partner in crime had said that was where we needed to go to get the vinyl for my studio floor. After much fruitless searching, and several phone calls, it turned out that the HD we really needed was another 15 minutes away. So off we went. By now it was about 5 p.m., getting dark, and getting cold. And did I mention that I have carpet in the studio? And that we didn't want (don't ask) to rip it out, but lay the vinyl over it? This required not only vinyl flooring, but also hardboard (masonite) to lay over the carpet but under the vinyl (clear as mud yet?) for stability. Soooo...by 6 p.m. we had the hardboard, the vinyl, tape, glue, and a few other miscellaneous necessities (Home Depot is like Target - you go in for one thing and spend $150 on four things). We were on our way!

Until we got outside to the car. And realized that the vinyl at its longest was 11 feet. And that the five sheets of hardboard wouldn't fit in the car. And of course, we were nowhere near home so we couldn't really wing it. Brett laid the vinyl in at an angle, with one end sticking out the passenger side window. Meaning we would have to drive home with the window down (have I mentioned that it was COLD out? And then we shrink-wrapped (I'm serious) the hardboard to the top of the car. Because of the way the vinyl was lying, I couldn't sit up in the back seat, so had to lay down for the trip home...which started out on the freeway, but we had a lot of wind resistance, so Brett ended up taking surface streets most of the way. Nearly an hour later, we arrived in true hillbilly style!

The vinyl is sticking out the window, and if you look carefully, you can see the masonite boards shrink-wrapped to the top of the vehicle...
And thus ends Phase 1. Don't worry, there's more (much more than I ever imagined) to come...