It finally became apparent to me that I just needed a little more space to dye, and many fewer steps to accomplish it. I’ve just (mostly) finished moving around and remodeling our laundry room to make it easier to work.
A few months ago was Phase One. I rearranged the ‘furniture’ of the room…which involved extra ducting and some rewiring to have the dryer on the other side of the room where it should be….next to the washer. I have serious love of this side effect of the studio move. Anyway, now that I have a clear space, I moved my handy metal cabinet over there (to the side of the awkward metal pipe sticking out of the floor), and put my countertop back on (it have been across the dryer before, which worked, but not ideal. Because I could back the cabinet up to the side of that pipe, I gained 18 inches of room! To use the vertical space, I put up some 2×4’s and installed pegboard. Love it. I moved in my dyes, and now I have room to dye, even with all those bottles on the counter. There’s even the perfect place underneath to tuck my spin-dryer.
I had a problem, though…I’ve had to walk to the bathroom to get water…adding a ton of walking to dye days. Good for me, I suppose, but not very efficient, and full of ‘doh’ moments when I fetched not-quite-enough water and have to get a smidge more. So Phase Two was a sink. I bought most of the stuff for this when I purchased things for Phase One, but summer came and was crazier than I always think it will be (note to self, do not make big plans for summer).
Anyway, I have this nice table that was built for a knitting machine. It’s too short for me, and doesn’t hold up well to the side-to-side movements required, so I’ve been using it for a project table, and finally kicked it out of my fiber studio entirely. Voila, place for a sink. I purchased a nice acrylic sink at our local Habitat ReStore, and picked up a faucet and drain tubing and such at Home Depot.
The plywood of the table wouldn’t be great for such a wet area, so I also looked for vinyl flooring remnants. They didn’t have anything that small, so I went with self-stick floor tiles. Cheap, and works….and hey, matches my sink! We are not going to mention the tube of caulk that refused to set up and had to be totally removed. Ew.
And here, I hit a snag, and took another couple of trips to the store. First, I didn’t have a way to hook my drainpipe to the sink. And the way I thought I would hook up the faucet was not quite based in reality. A very helpful associate got me set up with the adapters I needed, and I happily hooked things up. Um, can we say ‘fountain’?
So…another trip to the store so I could wrap the joints more copiously with teflon tape, and I was in business. Heh. I also grabbed an adapter so my hanging lamps would turn on with the regular light. Perfect. So here’s the whole space:
And the new studio in ‘action’. You have to pardon the black and white, I’m working on Tiger Club for August, and it is top secret.
Look what arrived on my doorstep just as I finished:
What timing, eh? Anyway, I’m greatly enjoying the new space, and only have a few little tweaks to do. I look forward to creating lovely colors for you!
