The Results Are In

These are the samples of paint/glaze on the bead-board. To get things started I've decided to paint the bathroom wall the linen color with brown stain (top right) and paint the baseboard, ceiling trim and bathroom door in the red with brown stain (bottom right.) The cabinet/island unit will be painted black with brown stain (bottom left.) Let me know what you think and I hope this pictures does a good job showing the samples. Thank you for all of your support and encouragement!

-Janice

The shining!

Check out the finish on this floor! After many hours of scrubbing, staining, sealing and waxing, the floor is finally finished. My elbow and shoulder are certainly ready to move on to something different. The bathroom is almost finished, the guttering has been installed, but the to-do list is still very long. We are STILL waiting on the contractor to finish up with the door issues (TIP: Don't pay your bill in full until the job is complete.) I've been playing around with the different stains and paints trying to decide what to do with the bead-board walls. The car siding will be finished with some type of oil and it will change color with age.

I'll close this post with a Merry Christmas and it will be next year before I have time to post again! Thanks for looking, -Janice

To glaze or not to glaze?

I wanted to bring you up to date and share this picture of the inside - WOW! - Huck is doing a fantastic job. He decided to finish the interior walls with "car siding." It's a beautiful knotty pine that is tongue and groove. I want to go over it with a very light taupe color diluted with glaze (you'd still be able to see all of the wood detail) to tone down the overwhelming "yella wood" feeling, but everyone else is of the opinion to clear coat it. I've been insulating and will get finished with that today so he can get all of the siding installed this week and then we can put the trim up and I'll prime and paint the ceiling next weekend. After that we'll finish the other three walls of the glaze room. We need to find someone to mud and tape what little sheetrock we've hung. I found some wallpaper that looks like old fashioned ceiling tin and I'm going to put that behind the old wood stove. We are still undecided what we are going to do about our gas kiln delimna. I did get an email from my Pennsylvania potter friend, Linda Stauffer - http://www.lindastauffer.com Take a look at her new kiln! My brother-in-law should be here soon with the work counter/cabinets. I've put in a call to a guy to polish and seal the floor. Before you know it, it will be time to move all of the equipment to The Studio and start classes. I'd like to thank those of you patiently waiting for classes to start! Later, -Janice

Inside Work

It's been a month since the last time I posted anything on this blog. What a month it has been. Getting the electric work completed was a major undertaking. I don't think Huck has had a single day off since his retirement. He has installed all the plugs and switches and the light fixtures are almost all in. The ceiling (wafer board-one word? two? who cares it's still ugly) is in and needs to be painted. This weekend was the huge arts and crafts festival here in Mound City and it was so cold we built a fire and worked in The Studio all weekend instead of going to the fair, it was warm and cozy (thanks to all of the itchy insulation I installed in the ceiling!) I've included the first pictures of the inside. The bathroom walls are almost finished. Next we can start on the plumbing. There is also a picture of the wood burning stove I found on a trip to Arkansas - it's a jewel. Huck also installed the stove kit and stove pipe so we'd had supplemental heat. We will heat the studio with electric eheat panels - thanks to a great tip from Pennsylvania potter, Linda Stauffer. We also had our annual cookout this weekend. The studio and wood stove made it doable. The guys stayed outside just long enough to cook the hotdogs and back inside to sit around the wood stove and visit. The Grady's Kids art auction is next weekend and I've donated two four week pottery classes - I sure hope someone bids on them! The auction helps Linn County children in need. I'll do a better job of staying current with posting. I'm hoping we'll be ready to open for classes sometime in November.

Still in the dark ;)

Well...

When I look at my last blog entry I can only laugh. I was bold enough to believe I'd have electricity by August 20th. It's been almost a month and still no electric service. I thought they would slap a meter on the side of The Studio and we'd be set. Oh no, Kansas City Power and Light (KCP&L) likes to make life difficult and expensive. It seems if you have two meters on your property the second meter pays a commercial rate. With two electric kilns and electric heat we didn't think that would be the way to go. KCP&L didn't seem to appreciate the fact that we are all electric. To keep a long story short and $2,200 later, we will have one meter with 400 amp service that goes to two 200 amp boxes-one for the house and one for The Studio. And it could still be another couple of weeks before all of this is finished. Oh well, I just need to hang in there!

Electricity isn't our only set back. It looks like I am back to square one with the gas kiln.

I still can't complain. I go to The Studio and get lost in all the wonderful things that are developing. Thanks for checking in with our project!

Progress!

I decided a shake things up a bit and show you a picture of the almost completed studio from a different view. The building itself has only a few things that need to be finished (including painting that white door!) There will be a garage door in the very large hole in the north end. Tomorrow Mark will be here to install the sewer and water lines. Tom will also start the wiring tomorrow and he estimated that will take about four days. Electricity! Just think, this time next week I can turn on a light, run the attic fan (don't know how effective that will be without a ceiling), bisque fire in a kiln that hasn't been fired in so long it won't know how to act! Without the ceiling installed I won't be checking out the new AC unit, by noon each day my little building gets very toasty. As soon as the wiring is finished the construction crew can put the ceiling in and they will be finished! The walls are studded for the restroom and glaze room. I think we are going to finish the inside walls with rough cut lumber - I hope that looks okay. I saw Huck with his garden wagon loaded down with clay I bought in North Carolina while on vacation this summer heading to the studio this evening. Today was my first day back to school and I was surprised he hadn't hauled more of my "junk", as he puts it, to the studio. I have been planning and collecting for this project for a very long time. I can't blame him, the shed is full, there is only a path through our double-car garage and my studio takes up over half of the basement. He is looking forward to the return of his space and a garage he can keep clean. Thanks for looking at my blog and I certainly enjoy all of your emails! ;) -Janice

"I love naked ladies!"

I wonder how many filters will not allow this blog because of today's title? Not much to post about The Studio today, so I've decided to tell you a story from nine or ten years ago involving naked ladies (Amaryllis.) There are so many in bloom now and it makes me think of this story. The picture is from my neighbor's yard. I wish my flower beds looked like this, but I figured out to make beautiful pots with the clay instead of trying to grow beautiful things in the clay and that's worked out better, thus, The Studio.

At the time I was a K-12 library media specialist and spending half of the day in the elementary building. (Why, oh why, did I ever let anyone sign me up for the elementary stuff?) Anyway, there was a 1st grade class of 20 little boys. They all came in one afternoon, just after school started, and one little boy said "Mrs. Schubert, I want a book about flowers, I love naked ladies." At that moment all the other little boys started telling their naked lady stories..."I've seen my mom naked", "I've seen my sister naked" and on they went. To say the least I lost control of the room and to this day I don't know how to handle a herd of 1st graders. Now Billy is in high school and when I see him I smile!

Whoa! It's bright (and hot) out there.

You've gotta love her...Shanise comes to work everyday, works hard and sweats like a man, yet she never looses her sence of "girl". Check-out her pretty necklace!

Today they are putting up the walls inside for the glaze room and the restroom along with finishing the metal on the outside.

Still, so much to get finished before...

We're almost there!

This is the latest picture of The Studio. The metal is on the east roof and sides, the doors and windows are in, the insulation is up and we're almost there!

I'm not sure what kind of bird this is, maybe some sort of Flycatcher, but it is very interested in the construction of The Studio. I've seen it several times in the evenings when I've gone down to see the progress of the day's work. It has an odd sound and doesn't seem to mind my presence or taking pictures.

Lane and I played in the concrete when they poured the porch and the kiln shed. He didn't know what to think, but went along with it. I couldn't resist the urge to include my pottery stamp. Now we need to get Tucker here so we can pour the step and get his signature.

Construction continues...

Progress is being made although it doesn't much look like it. They will put the metal on soon and then we'll be on the downhill slide. The concrete for the porch and the kiln shed still needs to be poured.

Roan Mountain

When I went outside this morning to take the construction picture for today's blog it was already hot (July in Kansas woke up yesterday) and made me long to be back in Western North Carolina. I just had a great idea...I'll take some pictures of the awesome pieces of pottery we bought while there. Our first trip in the motorhome was a "pottery vacation." We first traveled to Quakertown, Pennsylvania and I enjoyed a wonderful brush-making workshop with Linda Stauffer. It was there that I picked up many wonderful tips of what to do with the studio. Linda has a great website... http://www.lindastauffer.com/ and she is simply a very amazing and talented lady. After our stay in Pennsylvania we were off to the mountains of Western North Carolina - more about that later.

I'm looking forward to this afternoon. Joe Summers, Prairie View High School Art Instructor, has planned for the artists of Linn County to gather and see if there is interest in forming an art group. Check back and see how the meeting went!

We've got friends coming this evening for BBQ so I'd better get busy!

Please visit this blog again (and again!) -Janice

Concrete

OMG! Just look! I cannot wait to give you a studio tour when this project is complete! (I'm afraid every sentence is going to have an exclamation mark today!) These guys are great, they know what they are doing and...just look!

Thank goodness you're not seeing a picture of Scout (our Jack Russell Terrier) out there in the middle helping. Early this morning Huck put Toby (our Bearded Collie) in the pen and left Scout out. As soon as the construction crew arrived Scout had to join Toby in the pen. Dog (Matt's Border Collie that is spending his retirement years with us) stays out of the way, he hides out in the bushes waiting for a car to chase.

I wish I had more time to mess around with the computer and figure this stuff out. These three pictures are in the opposite order of how I wanted them to appear. I need a 5th grader to come and do my computer work and then maybe the website for The Studio would be up and going and this blog would look better.

Soon this will be a pottery blog instead of a construction blog. I've appreciated all of the emails and comments of encouragement!

-Janice

Construction

Wow! I can't believe this is finally happening. I've planned, waited, researched, waited, collected equipment, waited, attended classes and workshops, waited, got bids for the construction, waited, ...you get the idea!

Very soon our studio will be open for lots of fun filled adventures in clay. We will be hosting different levels of classes, workshops, raku firings, etc. If there is something specific you're interested in pursuing let us know.

Huck retired June 1st and I tell him he will make a wonderful studio manager and I just get this "are you nuts" look. He is very excited to get all of my pottery stuff out of the garage and basement, I just hope he waits until Brandon is finished with the job. Brandon Johnson is our contractor and I can't say enough about the quality of his work - fantastic! Although Brandon had worked at our rent house I didn't realize he did projects such as The Studio (a pole barn type structure.)

The plan for this blog is to keep anyone interested apprised of what's going on at The Potters' Studio. As the name suggests, there will be many potters involved!

I've posted a few of the construction pictures. Saturday is concrete day!

Stay tuned, Janice