Studio Story Part 3: Overcoming the Unexpected

Even when you anticipate that there will be things that you don't know about......let's just say that we have had more of this than we anticipated!  Ha!
I am trying to remain philosophical.  Tis better to know the reality and deal with it, right?!

Yes, that is what it looks like:  an enormous (!) old honeycomb was removed from behind the old shower plumbing.

See that line running UNDER the foundation?

That is irrigation pipe, and it was not capped off.  The studio is part of a major addition 

that was added to the house by the original owners.  Who did it?!

The corner just left of the left window in this image was in such bad repair the entire thing was reconstructed and waterproofed.  

These two people, my architect and the project foreman, are working together to get it done properly.

Many problems have been solved.

Here is the newly-widened doorway leading into the new wet-area.  

This will have a  pocket door.

A new shelving area was added to the old hallway...

And this was taken standing in a newly-created doorway looking from the hall into the wet-area.

The plywood on the far side of the room will eventually be the new door leading out to the side yard 

and a newly-poured concrete slab where I can do stinky messy stuff.

Looking from the main room down the hallway...

Some other fun stuff....

I'm looking at materials for the space.  I chose this birch flooring/stain (on the right)

for the main design area of the studio (the wet-area will have simple concrete floors with rubber mats).  The hexi tile will be installed on the floor of the old shower area in the wet room.  The gray composite material in front of the hexi sample is laboratory countertop material, which is what I intend to use on the counter of my wet studio (just one place, everything else will be stainless surface).  

Here we are looking at a variety of subway type tiles for the shower walls.  I want a combo of rectangular pieces (naturally!) so we are discussing how to do this.

Maybe some combo of these?

I was able to sneak out and carve our initials into my newly-poured slab.

I've always wanted to do this!  Yay!

The status is that we are still chasing an occult water leak which seems to be coming from failed caulking around the old window frames.  This has caused a lot of damage and we are dealing with that.  The sheetrock work really can't begin until this has been solved but the crew is finding many things that can be done while the search is on for the leaks.  The electrical upgrades have been put in place.  I added another circuit to handle the potential load from multiple heat sources.  The design wall board has arrived.  I am using the same material as Nancy Crow has in her Timberframe barn in Ohio, a product from Canada which is not frequently used here in the States but is AWESOME for pinning!  We have figured out how to put it up and finish around it.