Repainting Studio C

As you can see it was pink and green and a myriad of other colors. Now just a simple and elegant shade of ultra pure bright white with a slightly beige tinge to the wainscoting.

Aren't We Official

The Fly In

It's certainly easier than carrying it up the stairs.

Patriotic 9/11 Whoopie Pie

Our afternoon snack from the local corner store was flying these unusual colors for one important day, until Barry ate it. Insane, right?

FRAMING OUT THE STUDIOS

The ceiling was finished a few weeks ago and we have moved ahead with the framing of the walls in between hour long meetings with plumbers, electricians and code officials. We have now built out the stud walls for the three spaces, bathroom and the entry vestibule. We have also left spaces for the transome windows that will be located above each studio door, as well as a few little farmy windows that will filter a little extra light into the interior common space. There are also a few pix of the before and after of the window rehab job I did. Scraping, re-glazing and putting a new coat of paint on them has made them quite lovely. Also since the first batch of fotos was taken we've had a chance to put up the homosote sound board that will make the studios nice and quiet as well as some of the 12 foot sheets of sheetrock in the stairwell.

We've Got Sheetrock

Here are a few pictures of the new ceiling on the second floor. Not yet mudded and taped but well on its way.

New Installment Of Arty Pix

What We Did On Our Day Off

Sleeping on the beach, sailing with old friends in Blue Hill Bay or learning to bake maple cream pie... believe me we never stopped thinking about the building and all of the work we should have been doing... yeah right

The Old Waterworks

This is an amazing spot just below mill number 5 where the canal exits the building. No longer in use but still beautiful.

FINDING THE FLOOR

We knew that somewhere under all of this super old linoleum from probably 1946 that there must be WOOD. We didn't know it would end up being the dirtiest job yet. But someone's gotta do it!! And thanks to Barry and Thomas and their seemingly endless energy, we found it! The process may seem a bit comfusing but it was essentially a 3 part process. First we peeled up the linoleum and unfortunately it left behind its rather thick paper backing. Next there was a lot of ripping, pulling and scraping. What was left was a gross piney smelling adhesive. We at first thought we could sand it but then on one of those really hot and humid days it turned back to goo. So Barry did some research and found out we could dissolve it with hot water. So we painstakingly pour boiling water on 12 inch square rags to hold in the heat and after a few minutes we lifted it and quickly scraped before it turned back to glue. So low and behold we have a wood floor, one square foot at a time.

This is the stairwell where it comes up into the second floor. We thought that taking out this overbuilt wood strapping structure would do too much damage to the old horse hair plaster underneath. Rather than be stuck with a giant holey mess that would need a tone of patching we thought we could reuse the strapping and sheet rock over it. But our desire to get back to the bones of the building got to us and Barry yanked it off the wall!! Much to our suprise half of the brick and most of the plaster DIDN'T come off with the 3 inch nails they used to put it up. 

Executive Lunch Room

Removing The Freight

On Friday we had a local guy named Joey come to take out the elevator. The shaft goes from the basement to the second floor, and apparently used to be used to move pianos and organs when there was a repair shop on the upper level. Its unfortunate that we couldn't keep it but it was a serious liability and would have needed tons of repairs and tons of dollars to bring it up to code, seeing that it was nothing but a chain hoist that lifted the carriage. So here you can see the cafe space with boxed out elevator in the back center (blue doors) and the second floor studio space with the elevator coming up into the middle of it. The rest is pretty self explanatory. Now all we have to do is deal with a rather large hole in the floor that frighteningly goes three floors down.