Finishing the studio - new cabinets!

Where does the year go?  I just realized I left blogging last April, as if nothing else had been going on  in our lives.  We actually have completed multiple projects since then, and I am going to work on them one at a time.  So since I left off after we started our central heating/air project (and we have loved our central air!), I am going to go through the rebuild there first.






This is what the original closets looked like. We took those out, so we could better utilize the space.

We listed the doors and drawers on Craigslist for free, and someone came and took them away.  I hate it when people throw things away, when someone else can use them!
















So now we had a big open space. I knew I wanted to put a lot of my fabric bins in there, so we measured and figured out the size opening, and framed it in.  We also painted the interior after repairing all the cracks/dents/crud.

We framed it out, installed the shelves, and .......

took off a year.  LOL.  We did other things, but nothing here.  All my studio stuff sat in the garage in boxes, which gathered sawdust and other dust. We did this and that, and then my daughter said that they would be coming out in June of 2018, so in April (because we don't plan ahead so good), we started working on the plan that we had earlier, but now had a reason to get it don.  We scraped the ceiling (which had water damage from when we put a new roof on - it RAINED during a drought  on the ONE DAY we had no roof on, and some of the paint in this room bubbled.

So we scraped the old paint, fixed the bumpy ceiling, and Dale did a skim coat over the whole thing, which made it look FABULOUS.  Then we installed a ceiling fan.  Then we began work on the murphy bed:

I think I must have snap-chatted most of these pics, because this is all I have!  We created a box, put in the murphy bed hardware, installed the box to the wall, then built shelves around it.


Then we applied 12,398 coats of white paint. Seriously, it felt like I was painting and painting and painting.....but finally got the wall all done, and it was awesome.  Then we painted the walls a lovely shade of lavender.



In this picture, everything looks scrunched down by the one side of the room, because my daughter and her husband were coming to spend a couple of months while we all worked on renovating an airstream with them.  So I pushed everything to one side since they'd have the bed down all the time for awhile.  I don't know what those weird dark splotches are on the picture....hmmm.  Anyway, here's a weird pano of the room:




I need to take some good pics of the room - I've added a couple of shelves for paints, etc over the desk, and a shelf for Dale's Smokey Bear collection.  But right now it's not all that organized because I still need one more shelf but that got pushed to the side for some other projects....which I'll write about soon!

Working on the house....

It's been awhile since I posted anything!  And it's not that we haven't been busy, I just needed to sit down and write some stuff down.  So I'm going to just jump right in.

For the past few years, we've been living in a drought out here in sunny Southern California.  Which has resulted in a lot of challenges, but one of the ones that has becoming a bigger issue for us is the increased heat of the summers. When we move out here to Long Beach, we had that great experience of year round nice weather, not too chilly in the winter, not too hot in the summer.  But with the drought - and more likely, as part of climate change in general - it's been substantially hotter during the summer.  We went from having a summer that had maybe 2 weeks in the summer where we wished we had air conditioning, and managed through that with a window air conditioner in the bedroom, to a situation where it's unbearably warm for extended weeks, and last year, nearly the whole summer.  While that may lesson now that we seem to be out of the drought and back into a more "normal" cycle, realistically speaking, it's only going to be warmer, not cooler.  So we have been giving serious thought to installing central heating and air.

In the first 4 years here, we haven't had to really rely on our sub-par heating system. When we bought the house, the inspector told us that really the heater needed to be replaced, as it wasn't heating enough.  It's a radiant heater in the floor, in the wall between the hall and the living room.  Not attractive, not functional. This is what it looked like when we bought the house.

When I built the bookcases, I actually built around the heater and installed metal grates in the doors to let the (insubstantial) heat radiate out.   This is how it's looked for the last 3 years.

To get central air, we'd need to have ducts and a whole system installed.  So in the fall, we got an estimate from a couple of companies, and it was more than we wanted to pay.  So we thought about it, and this spring, we decided to see if we could do a little bargaining (use the lower estimate to get the company we liked better to price match, which they did, even going $500 below), and got it scheduled.



To get ready, Dale and I had to do 3 things: remove the old heater, and remove the water heater from its cabinet outside the house, so we could put the new furnace in there, and remove the catio so they could put the condenser unit.  All these things needed follow up, and that's what I'm going to show here.


First, removing the heater.  That was a chore! It involved Dale crawling under the house and disconnecting the gas, and removing some of the elements that he could reach from there, and then us removing the screws and parts and dragging it out.  No pictures of this process, it was loud, exhausting and filthy - but at the end, we had our old heater all taken apart and ripped out.



Here it is, sitting on the curb waiting to be picked up by metal scrappers.  It sat there for about an hour before someone loaded it up and took it away.




Then we were left with a hole to patch.  Dale was cracking up because I was sure some critter was going to come up the hole, and every noise I heard I was sure was a raccoon or feral cat or squirrel or something coming up.


That's the dirt under the house, y'all.  Gross.  We actually put the grates back over it but they were just sitting there and I've seen raccoons in our neighborhood.  Anyways....




Then we had to build this up, both in the hall here, but also within the cabinets.





I built new shelves inside, and replaced the metal grate panels with the original panels, which I had saved.  Then I repainted and got everything all installed.  That side looks good ---

Then we had to build out the other side, and patch the floors:

We had bought some flooring (unfinished) to match the original flooring, so I had to blend that in with the existing planks, after putting in a plywood subfloor.  We insulated the space, and then added some cement board, and now Dale has to build out the wall and plaster it over, and you'll never even know it was there.

So -- the other thing we had to do was take out the water heater from it's closet:

and install a tankless water heater on the outside. This was so they could put the furnace unit in that space. We ordered a tankless heater, and got started on the project, building a panel, getting the unit put on the wall -- and then......


We ran across 2 problems, just as the HVAC people came to get installation going.  We were going to pull the water heater, we had it drained, ready to pull out, and the HVAC people looked at the cabinet and said, "we can't put the furnace in there."  Not enough room in the attic for the plenum (air handler), and no route for an air return.  Great.  So we turned the water heater back on and refilled it, thinking, we can do the tankless thing in a day or two anyway, and then while we were looking at the tankless, it requires 3/4" gas lines, and we have 1/2".  We call the gas company, who comes out and says, "you need an upgraded meter."  Yay.


So we are STILL waiting on that (which is why the picture shows unconnected pipe), and using our old water heater.  We'll get this connected as soon as we get our meter upgrade (any day now!).

The other problem needed more thought.  We were not happy, our sales person had contacted the company and had done measurements before we signed our contract, and now they're saying, we have to put it elsewhere. They looked in the attic (too low, we have a low angled roof), maybe we'd have to use the guest room closet and move the closet into the water heater space (they are back to back), but they have to send a carpenter out to frame out the space and get it ready.  And that should be in a week or so. So we were pretty frustrated. But, it gave us time to think, and we decided we'd rather put the furnace in a different space - right off the entry where we have a door to the bedroom that we use as a studio.  This space, that open door (this is from a long time ago before I added a glass panel to the front door) :

Here's the space from inside the room.  It was a little jog and the only purpose of it is to have a place for the door.  it's about a 2.5 x 2.5 foot space that can't be used for anything, and if we close it off, it still leaves us one door into the room, from the hall.

It's kind of odd that this bedroom actually has two doors, one of them off the front hall.  We'd talked about extending the hall closet to use more storage space there - we'd been to an open house in the neighborhood, and that's what had been done there, so it was something we'd thought of before.  One of the problems with that room is that we always treat it as a hallway, and it was awkward, so closing off that space was a good use of the space.  So by the time the HVAC carpenter came out, we had a new idea, and they thought it was ideal.  So now it looks like this:

They moved the door forward, the door swings the other way, and the space has been insulated so it's quiet.  The intake is on the living room side behind the small tables, not even noticeable.






The inside of the room now looks like this.  we didn't ask them to smooth it out any further because we are building a bookcase unit over it.  this room now has a closet (that we are removing) on the left side of the wall, and on the right side is what you see here, the closed off space.  We are going to build a full wall of bookshelves and include a door to the closet and a murphy bed for our visitors.  On the other wall, across from it, I used to have two bookshelves, which I just sold this morning. This is where I am going to move my desks.









So next, we are going to demo the old closet. We've removed the doors and drawers, and we'll clear it out and get shelves built in for storing fabric and larger items.  Then we'll continue to build the walls out and then get some shelves and a bed built in.  Next post, I'll outline the plans!

Studio - cleaned up

I finished painting this morning while watching/listening to the Rose Bowl parade - I really like the gray because it's such a sunny room, and this makes it feel cool and relaxing.

Gray is a nice neutral that makes the colors of the artwork pop.











 Another reason I want to get it all cleaned up is so that I can some work done in here! 

I  have a lot of messy things in here - Dale wanted me to get closed doors on my shelves since they're usually full of oddball things, but that limits the size of what I can put in them.

The color is Polished Silver by Valspar.

Now to change up some color around here...

When we bought the house, it had been professionally painted - walls, trim, ceilings - which made it feel clean, but all the walls are this ghastly tan color.  I hate it.  But I have many other things to do, so at least we know they're clean.  But the tan is getting to me, so I started painting my studio this evening - a nice silvery gray.

 

Dale hates gray.   So he came home, saw the can of paint and says, "oh, now it's ON."  He wants to paint the living room - which is also the same gross shade of tan.  But I can't decide what color to paint it - we tend to like pretty powerful colors.  I'm contemplating black or a deep navy blue - but I don't know if we have enough white trim out there to pull it off.  The white in the studio - the wainscoting and the trim and all the furniture - make the gray a definite neutral.  I would like the same gray in the bathroom, but since Dale hates it.....

Anyway - got one coat on the walls tonight - tomorrow I'll finish up and post some pictures of the finished room with all the paintings hung back up!

more studio

After getting the room cleared of boxes and getting my tables set up, I was inspired to get the rest of the furniture in.  Still have lots of art supplies to move onto the shelves, but I finally have a place to put my red loveseat and Kandinsy-inspired rug.  It's looking like a nice cozy place to work!

The room serves a bit as a hallway - there's a straight shot through with doors on both ends.  The closet is in an awkward place in the corner, but since I am just using it to store large bins with fabric, I don't mind not being able to access the back corner right now.  We have some storage upgrades in mind down the road for all the closets, which are original to the house and have  two large drawers underneath, and doors with wooden slider doors that do NOT move very easily.  Last night, I installed steel rails and wheels on the ones in our master bedroom, which would not slide at all. 

Update on the bathroom progress:  slow!

Dale had to work another long weekend, so he hasn't made much progress.  He worked 12 hour days most days this week, with the additional Saturday being more like an 18 hour day, so needless to say, he's really tired and jumping into a bathroom rebuild was more than he was able to do.  However, on Sunday, he got the rest of the plumbing and venting done under the house, so we'll be able to get the floor all sealed up and leveled this week.  He's also got the shower framed and the bench built, so he's hoping to finish installing a new window and getting that mortar bed laid this week.  Maybe a few normal 8 hour days would come in handy!

Not his favorite job!

 

 

This morning, I changed out the hardware on the built in linen closet in the hall.  The view of the closet is framed in the doorway so you can see it from the living room - the old pulls were tarnished 1950s brass. 

Hmmm...the cabinets are bright white....the color's a bit off....

Studio

I am going to get this studio whipped into shape today.  This morning, I put together my IKEA desks - I really like the broad wall of desk space!

I've got to move my computer and printer in - I've saved some space on the left.  I also have a ton of artwork - one of the benefits of being an art teacher for years!  Although students often offer to give me artwork for free, I always insist on paying for it (unless it's a gift; one of my high school students gave me a painting as a graduation/leaving gift).  It's part of learning to be a professional artist, charging for your work!




Here's a wall of student work.  The large piece on the left is a current piece by a student I had way back in the 90s when I first started teaching, the one on the lower right is one of my very favorite pieces, and the top right is an abstract that was gifted to me.




I have lots more artwork to hang!  But this was a good start.