Happy (belated) birthday to me! OR the art room, part 1

What I wanted for my birthday this year was to get the walls in my art studio insulated and refinished (not by us), since it's the hottest room in the house in summer (not entirely a problem) and the coldest room in winter (definitely a problem!). Here's the "before" all emptied of most of my furniture:

I helped out the horrid 70's wallpaper by adding an artistic touch of graffiti to it. One of the graffitied words will end up back on the wall in a new form, but I haven't decided about the rest of the phrases. 

The other thing I returned to see after the summer conference was this:

looking in from the doorway

looking from the small window side

a big pile of ugly. farewell wallpaper. you won't be missed.

They rapidly moved forward on insulating and drywalling the room:

looking from the small window side

looking from the doorway

a shot of the small window from the doorway

Skim coating the walls:

the sealed up closet area and tools.

skim coat, and looking better with each step.

Then paint. I chose gray. Shocking, I know (not). I chose an incredibly light shade of gray with no other pigment besides black to add a bit of depth on the walls, but not to affect/distort the colors of the art I'll be working in the room. 

the gray looks bluish in the late afternoon light

Eric asked me "are you sure you didn't get blue??" nope, I didn't.

The daytime photo does a better job at representing the wall color. This also shows phase 2 of the project, still to come: finishing closet and reorganization of art supplies. eep!

Next, electrical. We got new outlets and, finally, an overhead light installed in the room! Since Eric gets no say in this room, I went a bit wild on my choice of light fixture. It won't be my light source when working, so I went for aesthetic rather than functional qualities. 

This light fixture came from Cost Plus and sat in my art room for about 1.5-2 years before it finally got hung.

We have a fairly low wattage light in there. I have a light table and 2 other lights to use when i'm actually working on art. 

There is one minor, itsy-bitsy problem with it currently. This is me standing below it. NOT on my tippy toes. We'll adjust the cord length ourselves once I'm ready to use the room fully. 

The next step for the art room is the closet. While I do kind of like the shelves that are currently there, I have two big filing cabinets that need to fit in the room with all my desks. The only way they're going to fit is if I move one of them INTO the closet. From this point on, the rest of the art room is being completed by me. I get to demo shelves, then I will paint the closet the bold color that I would have liked to put on the walls. What color, you ask? well, look no further than my hair for your answer. It's around that shade. And the Splashy blue that I loved on the inside of the kitchen cabinets may also be making a reappearance!

In between working on the closet itself I get to tackle The Purge. No, not the scary movie; the scary piles of art stuff.  I'm going through EVERYTHING, Marie Kondo style, and determining what to trash, donate (to art friends or friends' kids), store (old sketchbooks and art; maybe supplies that I'm not currently using but probably will again soon), or keep. If it's in the KEEP section, it doesn't get to come back into the room until there's an organized place for it. If it's in the STORE section, it's getting put into bins and placed in the bottom half of the upstairs hallway closet, which we've mostly had empty for the last two years.

Sorting, day 1, living room. The amazon box has the trash, the white crate has the donate pile so far. I've unearthed some really old art and even some prints by friends (the tree in the center of the pic) that will need to be framed and hung, either on the orange gallery wall in the living room or my future mini-gallery space in the art room. 

In the back of the photo you can see most of the furniture for the art room. The most expensive piece of furniture (for me) was the rolling chair at around $65, if I remember correctly. The drafting table was a gift; the light table I inherited from my department at work; the metal filing cabinets $20 for both cabinets, also from work, also originally in the art department. They are not quite true flat files, but good for the size I've been working recently and have been incredibly useful for organizing projects in progress since I've purchased them. 

Bathroom, weeks 1-2

As a refresher, this is what our bathroom has looked like for the last two years. We haven't really been using it all that much.

The original flooring was asbestos tile, which we got removed in the first month of home ownership. The subfloor around the tub was slowly crumbling. We added some exercise mats to access the bathroom in the interim, but mostly avoided using this room.

retro medicine cabinets and light fixtures. definitely not my style.

The walls had all the glue residue in a gnarly texture, a remnant of that lovely pink zigzag paper you can see on the center panel. With all the quirky angles in the bathroom, it also had this weird double-wall (to the right of the window) and an extra-thick wall around the shower. Our aim was to streamline all of the needless excess angles.

The gray tub had seashell stickies that were difficult to remove, but slowly breaking apart over time. The tub was also an old cast iron tub coated in a leaded porcelain, not something we'd want to keep in our house. 

Rule #1 when starting a renovation project: do NOT start the renovation on the last day of a 4 day conference when you've been out and about for all hours and are completely and utterly exhausted. Too bad we didn't follow this rule.

Rule #2: research and pick out what you want BEFORE starting the renovation project. Too bad we didn't follow this rule either.

...

I came home from the conference to this:

floor covering the floor and stairs on the front entrance.

plastic set up to block the living room from the dust and debris.

bye bye sink and vanity

bye bye medicine cabinet

bye bye funky wall thing

bye bye shower and tile

bye bye tub

There was more chaos in the house, but that will be covered in another blog post.

Because we were also getting some work done, we moved into the guest room
So we spent the week going to work, coming home, and then going to stores (or online) picking out things like sinks and paint and tile. Not the most restful relaxing experience.

While we searched, they worked:

bye bye light

electrical work to add new GFCI outlets

new air vent

new can light by the window/toilet 

new can light for the shower

and a scary discovery in the wall of some old razorblades. ick. 

We were going to turn the thick wall into a pony wall, and shift the plumbing to the opposite side, but after the wall was opened, we determined that the sewer drain was going to be too much of an added renovation cost to an already-over-what-we-wanted-to-spend remodel budget. So no extra natural light to the shower, but such is life.

And then there was the tub. We won't go into the tub too much, but the first tub I didn't like. So that meant, time to hunt for a new tub. And hunt, and hunt, and hunt. and weigh the pros and cons of a steel/porcelain tub versus an acrylic tub. After a lot of discussion and a call to a wise guru (thanks, Steve!), we decided that the expensive acrylic tub that was very deep and very comfy (and would require extra steps for installation, including a mortar base) was not the one for us. A combination of us not liking the concept of an acrylic tub with a finish that could be damaged easier, the added installation costs, and the extra water that would be used in each of the (glorious) baths taken. We did just come out of a 4-year drought after all. Instead, we opted for an American Standard Americast Cambridge tub, an engineered tub that is "a high quality porcelain surface with an enameling grade steel and a molded reinforcement composite backing."  It is a small deep soaker tub, deeper than normal tubs, but still not incredibly giant. I think it will be a happy medium.

The only minor catch was waiting nervously for a week for the tub to be delivered. Every time we looked at the tracking information, it told us that we'd get the tub in TWO weeks. A bit stressful, but 6 days after ordering our tub, it arrived. Deposited on our doorstep without even a knock or a doorbell ring. Luckily, we were home at the time and brought it in.

tub take 1. I was not a happy gail. It was very shallow.

Taking the new tub for a test drive upon arrival.

looks like i fit!

While we waited for the tub to arrive, the contractor tried to continue with as much as possible in the bathroom. Scraping the drywall, patching the drywall, and paint. I know that the painters hated us. I was very....particular...with what we wanted for the paint.

drywall repair 1

drywall repair 2

the colors we found at Farrow and Ball. But after buying really expensive, really tiny samples, we decided to find the closest match at Dunn Edwards.

a spot of paint. not all for the bathroom, however.

my photoshop mockup instructions to the painters. Told you they hated me. :)

The finished paint

the next day they were able to paint the frame around the access to the attic crawl space, so it blends into the wall.

our gray, charcoal gray, and red dramatic combo. 

Next week, tub and tile and more!

The chaos continues...

Guess what?! This photo you see is our new bathroom. ish. well, eventually it will be. We are back with renovation progress updates after a boring hiatus of paying off loans and saving up money for this project. More to come...