95% complete.....yay!!!

I looked back on the forum I like to frequent and it was over a year ago that I first hinted that we were thinking of turning the pantry into a mini studio. I remember that there were a lot of nay-sayers (sp?) but my thinking is....it's my studio....I can do whatever I want so long as I adhere to the rules of safety. So...without further ado....here are the 95% finished pics. More tomorrow as I add back some of the gear but for now it looks wonderful!

The corner workspace where I will primarily be working. The vent, instead of going up and out, now goes down and out. We hooked up a honking vortex fan which wound up being too strong so we added a speed dial so that the fan can be adjusted easily. Also, the table tops will be wrapped in metal so no fear of smoldering or burning.

This is the arm of the desk where my kiln will sit. Originally I thought I might try to put glass storage underneath or store my oxycon there after working but I think I might keep it clear because it makes the room much more airy.

A pic of the whole setup. I moved my balance ball chair from upstairs to my studio so now I'll have to find alternative seating for the study.

And the room from the doorway. I'm keeping the dental cabinet even though I originally didn't want to because it took up so much room but it's awesome for storage. All my miscellaneous tools, presses and whatnot are easily accessible. And it was a steal at $7!!

I love my room!!! DH worked super hard on it for me - even breaking into his vacation time just to make me happy so I'm a lucky duck :D

Walls and floors...

The last time I posted we - well Kev - had thrown up the drywall and taped and mudded the seams. This time we primed and painted the finished walls and when that was done yesterday we got to work on the flooring today.

Here is the room just painted. Hard to tell because of the lighting but the walls are pure white. I wanted to keep it clean and because it's such a small space I didn't want color to overwhelm it.

Here is the corner where my workspace will primarily be located. You can see the gas outlet near the floor. That hole in the floor is where my ventilation system will come up through the floor. That dial on the wall is the speed controller for my ventilation fan.

Here is another pic of the walls with the flooring. We still have to put up baseboard around the bottom but that's a quick job and should be one this week.

Here is a pic of the actual flooring. It's laminate. I think it's supposed to be rustic pine looking or something like that. We got it on super blow-out at Lowes. We paid $3/case and picked up 3 cases so the flooring cost us virtually nothing. The nice thing is that it's a floating floor so it can be changed out easily (not permanent) and it was almost free!

This room looks really good empty :D

The reno continues...

Nothing terribly interesting to talk about. Well...that's not entirely true...there's alot I could talk about but I am unable to because I'd be committing some major HIPAA violations and that's not cool. Suffice it to say sometimes people can really suck and I wish I felt like I worked with more people who are team players. Enough about that.

So Kev had 4 days off in a row which is a really big deal for him! He spent 1 day totally farting around doing absolutely nothing. Day 2 he started working on my room and got some drywall up.

He got the wall directly ahead done. We took Saturday off from drywalling but Kev did pull another line for me and so now I have a dedicated 20amp outlet that I can plug my kiln into.

Today we worked on more drywall and now all the walls are done and we just need to tape and mud (which I really hate doing!)

See that dial on the wall? That's the speed controller for my fan that's going to power my ventilation. I was so worried I wasn't going to have enough ooomph that we kinda went a little overboard. The solution? To put a speed controller on so I can adjust as needed. Kev's the best!

I wish I had beads to show or something fun to talk about but it's really been all doom and gloom at work and the most fun thing I've been working on is the studio. Keep checking in for more!

Let the games begin!!

So I finally wrangled Kev into doing some work on my tiny pantry-turned-studio. It's about the smallest studio you could ever imagine but there's enough room to work and I figure so long as all the basics are in place it's better than freezing or roasting my butt off in the garage :)

Here are the post-demo pics:

View from the door. Yeah...it's pretty tiny. We measured and it's about 4 1/2' x 6'.

There's a crawl space entry there to the left which is a fairly large space under the stairs. I plan to cut out some wall in between some of the 2x 4s to create some "built-in" storage. See! When you have such little space you learn to maximize.
This is the 6' length of wall. We're going to build a table that will be essentially L-shaped. My torch will face the corner and the kiln will sit along this wall.

Down to the subfloor. We found some uber cheap flooring on clearance at Lowes a while back so we'll be laying that once the walls are done and all the other stuff that needs to go in has gone in. It's hard to see but over in the corner where the level is there's a hole in the floor (has a pair of blue jeans stuffed in to prevent air from entering). That's where my ventilation ducting will be coming up through the floor.

I originally had my venting going up but that took up a lot of space and made my tiny workspace even more crowded. After Andrea's class we decided to change it up and vent down and out using a setup similar to what Whit built for her. We got a Vortex 6" fan that blows 450CFMs (which I honestly didn't think would be enough) and it's too strong! Kev is going to add a speed controller so that it can be adjusted for maximum pull.

Keep checking back. I think that the new walls should be in place and done by next weekend (Kev has some days off!) I'll keep posting pics to keep you updated.