Like I told you in my mini blog yesterday the house we livie in at Hiddenstreet in Kopavogur Iceland is built by a bridge maker. He built the house in 1953 and at that time people were very economical and used every material they could get for free. He built the garrage out of thick wood wheels that the strings in the string bridges were rolled up on. He then cast cement in between the wheels.
My brother is a carpenter and when he looked at the garage he said that it looked like it was held together by it´s roof ;) He would have wantet us to tear it all down and build a new one but we did not want to do that.
Well we never used it for our car but as a storage and a few times we hang curtains inside the walls blackening the light out to make a discotheque or a small movie theater.
In the fall 2014 we closed our gift shop that we ran in the main shopping street in Reykjavik for 11 years as well as my silk screen studio down town. Our fixtures and furnitures in the shop were mostly very old carved Icelandic shelfs and teak tables. We sold some of our stock items to another store but still had a lot of it left. As we live in a rather big house and my son has moved out we could stuff all the products we had left in one room (and almost filled it). The bigger furnitures had to go into the garrage.
As the old garage door was leaking and my plan was to make a studio there I talked to my brother the carpenter. He told me there was no point in putting another door the door frame. They had to tear the hole wall down. So he sent two carpenters from his company to tear the wall down. I had made a drawing of how I wanted the front to look like but I wanted a regular door and a big display window instead of the big garage door.
As you can see they didn´t have much work space but managed by doing all the sawing outside on the parking lot.
I bought a door that I had to polish and paint but the window I bought was white and ready to use.
I just wanted them to do the basic woodwork and I would then later deside what material I would put on the front and I would make the inside of the wall myself as well. (I used to study the foundation af carpentry in the technical college of Reykjavik as well as art school so I can do a lot my self when my health allows it).
Soon after I started to put some filler in the walls and paint a litle bit but my daughter and her friend were eager to help (then 9 years old).
You can see the wood wheels in the wall there.
But this didn´t last for long as I have MS (Multiple sclerosis) and got a relapse that fall. I had to change medicine and focus on my health but the next med didn´t work either so it wasn´t until last fall that I started still another medicine that my health got good enough for me to start working on the garage.
I started to put the insulation wool and plastic in the new wall last fall.
And I went around the corner and insulated the wall laying to the wooden wheel there.
I then put up plaster walls...
and used a filler in every gap before painting them.
I had awfully small space to work on every step of the way as the garage was still full of furniture´s and stuff.
And we even had to keep a few bags of hay for the chickens out there for a while.
But I trye´d to free up some space.
Then I started to cast cement slap on the floor as it was very uneven and rough and my plan was to put parquet on it.
I think I had around 8 square meters to work on in the beginning.
I had never done that before but I just went on youtube and asked the mason in the hardware store for tips.
My father heard it through the grapevines (or somehow) and came running over (my parents live in the next street). But he was eager to help me with this part of the work (my parents being very helpful people).
He also dragged my son over to teach him how to do this. Well my father is an electrical engineer and runs a engineering company and he is very meticulous, a total millimeter man. He went to get his cart and moved a lot of the furniture and stuff to his own garage. The rest he stacked by the walls on one side.
I think we made the floor in four parts.
But the concrete work wasn´t finished at that stage. I also had to make a new edge around the floor as the old one was so rough. I did that myself without help from my father.
When I went to the hardware store for yet another trip there now to buy the wood that would hold the concrete (don´t know the name of it in English) the guy in the store asked me curious if I was a educated carpenter. He was really starting to think that :) I told him that I had the foundation education but not a master in carpentry. But I felt a bit proud of my self for getting the question ;)
Before putting the parquet on the floor my daughter had her birthday but she is born on Halloween. We used the opportunity with the garage almost empty and we made a horror hose with a disco dance floor.
I still had my blue sofa out there as well so they could also have a seat between dancing. And the houe inside was also decorated so they could be inside or go out to the garage if they wanted to dance.
Then I had to try to clean the fake blood of the walls afterward. And I had to paint over some spots again.
Shortly before Christmas it was time for new heaters so be put up so I got a plummer and it was also time for the parquet to be layed. Again I went on youtube to get instructions because though I layed all the hardwood floors in my house with my mother 10 years ago I was doing a different floor in the garage. A plastic parquet that is clicked together piece by piece.
I don´t know how many times I had to move the stuff back and forth during all this process but fortunetly it was less stuff than in the beginning.
My father wanted to make a new electrical installation and put plugs for all my silkscreen devise and stuff all around the small house. While waiting for him to have the time for that I did all kinds of extra stuff. For example ripping the bottom and side walls of an old kitchen cabinet.
It was kind of moldy from moist so I also sprayed some teatree and edic mix on the rest of the wood as I built a new bottom.
Later I put a new counter top on it as well as new sides and a back.
I also put wheels under almost every loose stuff for example my infrared silk screen heater. But there was more stuff left to do for example finish the door frame and the new window. I got instructions by sending phone pictures and drawings back and forth to my brother and my father came once to get me started on it but then I was able to do the rest as well as the door frame my self and finishing and painting over all with white gloss paint.
Then in january I torn the disk in my knee joint (Don´t know what it´s called in English) so I was kind of disabled. But I could pass the hammer to my father while he was installing the new electricity. He also helped me to install the skirting boards on the parquet.
I had stararted to put the furnitures in places I wanted them before we put the new electricity to get a feel for where I wanted the inputs. My father was a bit irritated because of that as he had not so good workspace because of it.
I also had to deside which furnitures to keep and what to give away.
I had a surgery on my knee in march so I was off for a while after that. But I still had some things left to do for example put up cover plates in the sealing and put a new inner door that leads out to the garden as that door was leaking in bad weather.
The sealing was filled with stuff as well so I used the opportunity to give some away, throw some away and move the rest back and forth while working on it.
I was going up and down an alumium stair (not being so kind to my poor knee).
I had the space to saw and paint 3 plates at a time and let them dry and then screwing them up in the sealing while the next 3 were drying. I had also started to move a bit of my workshop tools and stuff from the house to the garage.
My recovery in the knee was not too good but I managed to finish the sealing ;)
I also built a small wall to devide the space a litle bit. But I have the front as a store/gallerie and the bigger part behind it for work space.
So in spring or beginning of summer my father came to help me build a door frame but my brother gave me an old door (actually not so old) to use for the garden door. I had to get steroids injected in my knee so again I was the one passing the tools over to my father.
And of course the frame fitted 100% in because of my father the millimeter man.
And the door fitted also perfectly in the frame.
I was very happy about the door with this hard plastic window in it. I now have 3 big windows in the studio and one big door window and one small door window so it is a very bright space to work in. But I will need to have blackening curtains in every one of them as I need to be able to blacken the room while casting ultra violet light on the silkscreen frames. I have purchased them all but only put up one of them for now.
The only thing left to do in the studio is to put up the sink and as I only have cold water coming in on the wrong place I need to dig a hole from the house to the studio and dig beside one wall to where the drain will be led from the sink. I am also going to lead warm water inside it.
I am also going to clean the wall up a little better where the water comes in now and change it to a gallery wall and have small art installations or exhibitions ongoing. Maybe I will also put up a photographic exhibition some day. For now I am working on an art piece. But I am also doing my handmade designs as well as having some of the remains from my store for sale.
I have a small saw and a heating plate for melting wax as well as a fridge full of homemade elderflower jelly.
Then I have a computer with internet, my light table, glass polishing machine, a sowing machine and all kinds of paper and different materials and tools. (Well I have 4 more sowing machines inside the house, a cutter for cutting thin films connected with a computer, overhead projector, colour photography developer and all equipments for a dark room so I have to pick and choose what to keep in the studio and what to keep in the house.)
I am also using clay but the plan is to make a clay wheel out of an old air fan. Don´t know where to fit it thoug as I have so much stuff in there already.
And my silkscreen tools the crab and the heat press and the infra red heater take a lot of space.
And here is the store part.
And my front window.
I even get gests in my studio now though I havn´t opened it officially.
Our oldest hen comes regularly for a visit when the back door is open.
And my dogs even hang out with me some days but they newer wanted to be there when I was working on the house it self.
Their favorite spot in the studio is unfortunately taken now ;)
More about what I am working on in my studio that got the name "Verbúðin við Hulduvör" translated "The fishing lodge at Hiddenstreet" later.
M.