We had a long 5 year commercial lease for a huge spiffy loft space on Santa Monica Blvd that, at the time of this writing, ended about a year and a half ago. We needed to move, and we needed to scale our operation at the same time.

The cost of that space in relation to the market and the jobs we were seeing was just so out of whack with reality that we were itching to move the studio into a space that was more in keeping with our style and means. Our old landlord was sad to see us leave. The old place is STILL vacant, in fact If you want it, message me and i’ll put you in touch with a huge fiery hole to throw your money into.

It took us about five months of searching to find this old, run down, abandoned Korean beauty parlor in East Hollywood. Pretty much all of our real estate savvy friends took one look at it and told us we were nuts. I saw the potential of the space immediately however and I already knew that I was nuts, so for me it was a done deal. Here are some of the Before pictures to fill you guys in on what we were dealing with:

The building hasn’t been taken care of, unfortunately. It’s a beautiful old French American School house from the beginning of the last century. I don’t know much more than that. The floors were sloped downhill for auditorium conference hall style seating.

The previous business had these horrible styrofoam drop ceilings, mirrors glued to the walls and all sorts of mold damage to many of the walls. I’m not sure who actually went here for any kind of beauty treatments. We did hear a rumor that it was a front for smuggling humans into the country.

The bathroom was pretty grim. This would take some work.

In the next part I’ll post images of the demo and construction. Have a look>