The process of change
My friends and family give us a hard time about how often we move. To be sure, in the 6 1/2 years our daughter has been alive we have moved five times. That's six homes. Though in our defense, we lived in our first house for five years before Emilia joined us.
And we are preparing to move again. If all goes well, the new house will need some repair and remodeling - it's a repo - but we hope to be in it by Thanksgiving. Why have we moved so often? Why are we moving now? Well, that's quite a list, but I'll hit the top 5: Privacy, trees, an out-building for the pottery studio, school district, yard to play in. This new house will have all five, and while it's smaller - and I can see a storm brewing between my husband and I about how much stuff we have - I think this has the major features we've been striving for.
I am now in a point in my pottery career that I cannot afford too much if any down-time. The new studio will need to be up and running asap, and that's going to be a challenge. The out-building space has framed walls and a ceiling, a small electrical panel and some outlets. There's no windows or exterior light, and it will remain that way, probably for about a year when I can turn the 16 foot garage door into a bank of windows. There's no water, and that will also be addressed at some future point. Until then I will make a jerry-rigged "Cink." Not sure how that's going to look at the moment, but I'll post a blog when I get there.
I will need to install insulation, sheet rock, 110 outlets and a 240 for the kiln, cut a couple 6 inch holes for venting the kiln and the glaze spray booth. Also, I'll be adding some kind of electrical baseboard heat, and shop lights. Did I mention this has to happen asap, before Thanksgiving, and I live in Montana? Oh, I do amuse myself.
My husband and I have built many homes over the course of the last 10 years. We are not new to this rodeo, and that's a good thing. John has TurboCAD or some such installed on his computer, and he was able to make a scale drawing for me of the new building, plus my existing equipment/tools so that I could play around with workflows while we wait for appraisers and banks. This will help tremendously in preparing for what to tell the electrician when we finally get to work.
A tip: Outline the shapes of the equipment in whatever way will help you best see the edges. I used a highlighter. Then put packing tape flat on the paper before you cut out the pieces to move around. This makes the pieces easier to grab and sturdier.
These are my layouts so far:
I'm sure that I will need to change/adjust/fine-tune when I get in the space. One would think that 576 square feet would be more than enough but I am finding it hard to fit in photo, shipping, making, firing, recycling, display all into the same area. Some things will need to be full-time available, hopefully other things will be able to be easy to use-easy to put away. Also, some things are going to have to be multi-taskers, and I will be needing to make tables and shelves to accomplish that.
Hmmm..... maybe I need to build a woodshop....
