Work Space - Day Five

The walls are done! No more painting ever again, until I start the stairwell. Hopefully in the next day or two I'll be able to do the final reveal with everything set up and in place.

I am exhausted. I don't know why I thought I could do this all on my own in a weekend. I think it's because they do it in those design shows and I wanted to prove that I could do it too. Never mind that they have a whole team of people working on everything.

A couple of problems that I have with the basement right now is that there is not nearly enough light. This can be fixed with a floor lamp or two, but I probably won't be getting that for a while. Sad. Another thing is the stairwell.

It's not just the fact that it's not finished, but also it scares the crap out of me. Out of the corner of my eye I keep seeing that white blotch which is about the height a person's head and I think that someone is coming down the stairs. Never mind that not even a ninja could get down those stairs without them squeaking.

Otherwise the whole experience has been a lot of fun. Exhausting and time consuming, but fun. Mark keeps talking about getting the other rooms of the house done, which would be nice, but I am not about to start any time soon. I'm just looking forward to enjoying my very own room to get some work done. Time for some much needed sleep.

Work Space - Day Four

I'm really not one to miss a deadline, even a self imposed one, but this one I missed entirely. I managed to start painting today! I painted almost all day in fact, but you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at the room. My entire body hurts from crouching in awkward positions to try and paint so low. Hopefully tomorrow will go a little faster since it will be spent mostly on the upper half of the walls.


So, not much to say about day four other than, ouch. 

Work Space - Day Three

Day two of my room makeover was pretty uninspiring. We had people come look at the house, so I had to move everything that I moved yesterday back to where it was to make the room presentable. That felt a little counterproductive.

However, despite that setback, I still managed to get some sanding done. There were still a couple of spots that were wet, so I wasn’t able to get it all sanded nor was I able to start painting the undercoat as I had originally planned. That means that at the end of the day yesterday, everything looked about the same as day one and I was feeling a little frustrated.

However, I did get some paint swatches. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for colours, so I brought home a bit of a variety.

Day three has brought about a lot better results. I spent the morning sanding everything down again and then washing all of the walls again. There seems to be a pattern to this madness.

After getting a good layer of dust and grim on myself, I realized that I needed to go get a pan for the paint, so I carefully changed my shirt so that I’d be more presentable and then went out. When I was in the line to leave the store, I realized that I hadn’t done anything to fix my hair, face or pants, and all were covered in a good layer of white dust. Thank goodness I changed my shirt, or I would have looked ridiculous!

Finally I got my first layer of paint down. The walls are now white. Well, sort of. Two walls are cream since I accidently took three cans of paint from my father that are  all different colours. Oops. But it’s only an undercoat anyway. Once I get the final colour on tomorrow (hopefully) it shouldn’t make a difference.

Although there have been a few setbacks, I still have hope that I’ll finish tomorrow. Thanks so much everyone for your support! I can't wait to have you all over when I've finished.

Work Space - Day One

For some time now I’ve been in need of a workroom, space where I can work on designs, illustrations, and write without distractions. We have a finished (more or less) basement that hasn’t been getting any use lately since it’s kind of dirty and not very pleasant to be in. Today I made the decision to turn the room into my office space.

Now, I’m not very good at handy work. In fact, I kind of suck. However, I’ve decided to take on this project all on my own, mostly. However, since I also don’t own any equipment to do this kind of work, my first move was to ask my father for what I’d need to fix up the walls.

And this is what he came up with. Yeah. That’s a lot more than I was expecting, and probably more than I will ever use during this project. However, I guess it’s better to be prepared, though while I was making the ten trips back and forth from my truck I didn’t really think so.

My goal is to have the entire room completed by Monday. So far I am about on par with my goal since I wanted to get the walls washed and any holes patched, and I managed to do both. It took me about 3.5 hours of solid work.

Cleaning took about two of those hours. I don’t think those walls have ever been washed before, and since part of the space was once used as a kitchen, so you can imagine the scum I was cleaning off. I also had a lot of meetings with spiders who were not so pleased with my cleaning routine.

So, at the end of day one, the place looks pretty messy, but for the first time since we moved in, I’m starting to get a feel for the space down there. Ideas and layouts are brewing in my brain as I work and I can’t wait to finish my very own workroom.