Brian and I did most of the demolition and renovation ourselves. Part of the reason we scaled down our studio overhead was to save money, so why not just do all the reno ourselves, right!?

Well! We most certainly saved a huge amount of cash, but it nearly killed us. For the first month of reno, we had to also do our computer work back at the old location. The weekdays were long, but the weekends were even longer.

For the stuff we just didn’t want to figure out ourselves we hired help. We had a plumber help with the kitchen and bathroom, some really lazy guys (don’t know what their title would be) to help grind the floors and float the new cement, and a great electrician who worked miracles on the existing shantytown power supply.

We ripped the drop ceiling out, the mid section wall, and two walls in the back section. When we pulled the carpet up in the loft we found some water damage in the flooring. A lot of the loft/kitchen/bathroom structure seemed to be built from found lumber. One part of the loft was supported by a wall made from police crossing barricades. This place need a lot of work:

I wanted to build a bookshelf/entertainment wall on the backside of the mid/cyc wall out of reclaimed lumber, but had to settle for pine. I have just enough room to work out back in our alley, which comes in handy when spraying or staining things:

Cesar and I were installing the south wall work surface as Brian and the movers were moving stuff in. It’s a nice 1″ply I coated in polyurethane, Cesar welded the legs from 1″x1″ square steel tubes:

The next renovation post will hopefully show the finished product, although I have to admit it’s all still a work in progress 18 months later. Next time I try to renovate something I’ll be sure to take 6 months off from work, and somehow be rich. It’s rewarding, but not always fun and never smooth. CHECK OUT THE NEXT AND FINAL RENOVATION POST>