We Have Walls!

Earlier this week I tacked up some tarps across the west interior wall. Behind the plastic sits all of our storage and art-making materials, just waiting to be taken out and played with. The tarps help conceal the boxes and furniture. They also help keep all the dust from coating our belongings.

We plan to keep the old floors natural. There are cool old marks and stains that we want to leave as part of the character of the space. The floor of the west side is painted. That is where we plan to have our studio workspace.

 Benjie began hanging drywall this week after the electricians finally completed running the wiring for the east side of the space. About half of the overall drywall is hung and ready to be finished off.

I got the place picked up and swept in anticipation of the Mini-Marathon Festival. We should have lots of visitors touring the building. Should be lots of fun! Lori and I really feel like part of the town now.

 Next week Benjie will tape and mud while the electricians work on the rest of the building. Once that is done, Lori and I will be cleaning and painting.

It has been a test of patience waiting for the electricians to work. They claim to be spread thin and run off to do "emergency service calls" constantly. I finally threatened to pay for work they had done and tell them to just not come back.  I hate being an asshole, but I also hate getting strung along.

 While Benjie was hanging the drywall, I knocked out the work counter that ran along the wall. As you can see from the image above, it really helped to open up the space!

One cool thing I found on the counter was a yard stick. I assumed it was used to measure out rope or chain or wire. What was cool about it was that it had Cook's Hardware written on it. Ed Cook was a longtime owner of the building and operator of the hardware store for many years. Unfortunately, the yard stick is now in pieces, but I did save them.

STUMP THE ARTIST

The Mini-Marathon is a few days away. We plan to have our doors open, even though nothing will be one the walls. Friday night we will be open for anyone to walk through. Saturday we will set up some chairs under the covered walkway. Should be a great time.

STUMP THE ARTIST: I plan to do 2-minute drawings, a corny stunt I have done in the past. I charge people $1 and they can ask me to draw the craziest thing they can think of, and I will do it in 2 minutes.

Music, art, games, kids, costumes, parade, running, pumpkins, dancing, shopping, food and bouncy houses... sounds like a recipe for fun if ever there was one.

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!!!!!!

Upcoming Program!

This is our first official program at The Boardwalk. The class is Free! We already have four confirmed participants.

The class will be taught by Liesa Bottka, a native German and certified Bauernmalerei painter.

It promises to be a great class!

Please consider signing up!

Tour of the Back

There are three doors along the back wall of the building. Next to each of the doors was a fireplace. This made sense when the space was divided into three separate businesses. Only the fireplace in the middle has survived (it was paneled over and hidden). The other two were taken out. The door on the left-hand side of the building was also covered over with paneling. The door in the middle leads outside to what used to be a lumber area. This is what you find when you step out back. A tin roof covered concrete slab with tons of lumber racks. A whole lot of moldings, dowels and planks were left behind. Yay!

As you round the corner there is also this awesome, though somewhat random, outhouse. The door is a great old solid wood piece that we plan to salvage. The rest will be going away sometime in the future.

Another treasure we found among the stacks of wood left behind are these cool old wooden boxes. We think they were either nail bins or heavy-duty milk crates. :) We plan to clean them up and sell them.







On the right-hand side of the space is another door. This is not it. This was probably a window they converted into a door  that used to connect to an addition. One story is that a mortician rented this third of the building and the addition was where he did the embalming! Cool! (Or, maybe we were told that story to try to scare us away... hmmmm.)

Over last weekend we were dumping all the materials left behind from demo-ing the office. A woman named Mary came by and asked if she could have the materials to repair her trailer. We helped her load up all she could take. She was very sweet, and obviously a hard working, resourceful woman.

The embalming room, as we affectionately call it now, is housing some of the lumber and materials we wanted to keep. The addition will also be getting torn down sometime in the future. This gaping hole will be bricked up. The proper door will then open to the outside again.

Our idea is to take the building back to as close to its original configuration as possible. We really want to utilize the space outside. The covered area will be great for hosting events and cook outs. The side yard, and porch, will be a relaxing place to sit and visit. The building is not turning out the way we originally hoped, but we are adapting to each new surprise we find (which can be really hard and frustrating). Good thing we have each other!

Update: Photo Diary

New panorama from just inside the front door, showing the framed walls on left and right.

 View through the new framing from left to right of the space.

Benjie, who took out the counter space a couple of months ago, framed the space. Lori and I decided to divide area into thirds. We left the span between two pillars open on either side.

 View through the framing from right to left of the space.

The electricians have been good (when they show up). It has been frustrating because they are so stretched thin. They come for two hours here and there. Several days lapse between working.

 A gathering of dust.

This weekend will be a big push for getting out all the debris and moving storage around to get out of the way of electricians.

 Wiring to the switch box next to the side door that leads to the yard outside.

We plan to have track lighting installed inside and flood lights on the outside. All of the old florescent lights have to be taken out. The place was originally "Frankenstein" wired with no regard for building codes.

Here is the fireplace we uncovered, and the old metal fan that is mounted to the ceiling.

We hope to keep the old fan. It works really well, but it's noisy as hell!

This view is from the back of the space looking toward the front door.

The hatch in the ceiling is one of three. There is only a couple of feet between the ceiling boards and the roofing. Criss-crossed rafters line the space in between with a blanket of raw fiberglass insulation.

Back At It!

Today was a very productive day at The Boardwalk!

• We opened our line of credit. 
• Had some framing done on the east side of space. 
• The office roof was almost completely dismantled. 
• The electrician has us on his schedule for next week. 

The east side of the space will be finished off and ready to be used as a gallery or rented for a commercial purpose. We are so excited! 

It is doubtful that everything will be finished by October 25 (Mini-Marathon Festival), but our doors will be open and the public will be welcome. 

We are also eager to have the space to make art again.  Only a few more weeks!