Tuesday, June 17

The big job in the last week has been finishing the drywall work. Once the A-1 Builders crew had all the pieces in place they brought in a specialist to finish all the joints. Tyson worked several days to get the walls and ceiling nice and smooth. First, a layer of “hot mud” to fill all the big cracks and joints. Then he taped the seams, with another layer of mud (a.k.a. joint compound). A little light sanding. Then another layer of mud. Then a little more light sanding. Each layer had to dry overnight, so they brought in an electric furnace and lots of fans to move the drying process along.

By this morning the drywall work was nearly done. The photo above shows some of the last work, finishing the edges around one of the recessed ceiling light boxes. Those boxes will ultimately have fluorescent fixtures that will be the work lights in the camera room. They’re built so the plexiglass lens will be essentially flush with the ceiling. Continue reading →

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Matt screws a ceiling sheetrock panel into place in the camera room. Notice the plywood blocking along the walls to hang background rollers and track for muslin backdrops.

Tuesday, June 10

The studio is starting to look like it has real rooms, with walls and ceilings. It’s a far cry from what we started with back in April.

We passed the electrical, plumbing, and framing inspections and then the insulation crew came in and did their thing. They placed thick fiberglass batts between the studs on the first floor and in parts of the attic. Where they couldn’t reach to place batts, they drilled holes and blew in cellulose insulation, packing the second story wall cavities. I’m not sure what the actual R-values are for all the spaces, but we’ve put in as much insulation as will fit and the county building inspector approved the work when it was done. Continue reading →

Studio exterior view with some windows in place and framing for front porch.

Thursday, May 29

There’s been a lot of progress on the studio in the last couple of weeks. We’re scheduled for inspections of the framing, wiring, and plumbing tomorrow.

French doors in east wall lead to the camera room.

The experienced foundation repair crew finished cutting holes for the new windows and doors, closed up the old barn door opening on the front of the building, and took down both barn doors. They installed the French doors leading from the camera room to the garden and most of the windows. The double window for the sales room came from the factory the wrong size and had to be re-ordered. The original supplier for the front door couldn’t get it built in time, so we switched doors and hope it will be here next week.

Continue reading →

Sunday, May 18

There was more slow and tedious work in the new studio last week, followed by a quick flurry of activity that looks a lot more like progress.

The tedious work was doubling all the joists that hold up my office on the second floor, immediately above the camera room. When the building was originally built in 1928 they used 2×6 lumber to span more than 12 feet. The rule of thumb for that distance calls for 2×12 lumber. As a result the joists had sagged a lot over the years and the floor bounced when we walked on it. It took a couple of days, but now all the joists are reinforced, with new 2x6s on both sides of the original ones. Continue reading →

Monday, May 12

Remodeling includes a lot of tedious work, which meant that visible progress last week was a little slower than the first couple of weeks. But by the time the A-1 Builders crew went home on Friday afternoon the subfloor was complete and the big glulam beam that supports my second-floor office was in place. Continue reading →

Monday, May 5

The crew from A-1 Builders made good progress last week, getting nearly all the new floor joists in place and laying most of the sub-floor. They deliberately left a few joists out where the plumber will install a new sewage grinder pump. It will be a whole lot easier to dig the hole under the crawl space for that without the joists and floor in place. Since the studio is lower than our septic tank and drain field we have to pump our sewage uphill and the old pump was buried outside and not in good shape. Continue reading →

Wednesday, April 30

It was a quiet weekend at the studio construction site as the crew from A-1 Builders works four 10-hour days Tuesday through Friday. The weather was good, which allowed the saturated soil to dry out a bit. The excavators dug trenches along the foundation walls to lay perforated drainage pipe. They’ve also painted a waterproofing compound on the foundation walls. This is an extra step to keep the underpinnings of the studio dry when the building is sealed up tight. For now, we’ve got piles of dirt everywhere and quite a mess. But our chickens have been having a great time picking through the dirt for fresh worms and grubs. Continue reading →

Saturday, April 26

Yesterday morning it rained pea gravel into the crawl space of our new studio. I was working in my office upstairs when I heard the sound of a big truck pulling up out front. I looked out the window to see a guy maneuvering a long conveyor belt toward the barn door on the front of the building. In a few minutes he powered up the conveyor and gravel started shooting toward the open door. When the truck pulled up I thought they were going to deliver the gravel slowly into a pile in the crawl space. But no, it was a remarkably well controlled high speed operation. In the photo above you can see the gravel raining down into the space. Continue reading →