Moving in

This is how I finished the plastering. As you can see, it's not as neat as if it had been done by a professional, but it is good enough.





I was a little concerned about the finishing where the plaster met the rafters as it really didn't look very good and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to ignore it. So I purchased some lengths of quarter-round and they have edged the bits of the plasterboard. Now that they're painted in, it looks almost professional - almost.



So, I started painting. I had bought a large bucket of brilliant white paint with the idea that I'd paint it all like that. However, as you can see in this picture, I'd put up some second-hand cupboards I picked up on eBay and against the white paint, they looked grey. I have also tried every gadget available on the market to supposedly make painting easier and I have to say that there's a reason why most painters still stick to the old roller and tray method. However, one tip I picked up from a painter was to put the tray into a plastic bag then pour the paint into the tray over the plastic bag. Work like that and when you're done, you simply turn the bag inside out over the dead paint and throw it away. No clean up of the tray required. I decided to leave the ceiling white so that I get the most light reflection and to paint the walls a gentle cream. A friend, Richard, came over to help me paint and over the course of a weekend we got all the painting done bar a few touch ups which I went back and did later. He also stayed on an extra day and helped me lay the floor which was an added bonus.



This last weekend, Zandy came and helped me put up some of the workbench. My neighbour, David, is coming back to cut down the other workbench so that it can go in place, but this means that I have started moving in. Things are not in their final places, by any means, but I've started to sort things out. As you can see, I've added another set of drawers under the cupboards. Hung underneath these drawers is a curtain rail with pincer clips hanging on it so that I can hang just about anything I want and have it within easy reach. I've seen these sold as a commercial product in the US and thought they were a really good idea but very expensive to buy and import. This cost me about £65 in total and it is exactly the length I need for my work space. It has 120 clips on it so I'm not going to run out of space any time soon.

Underneath one of the worktops I have a display stand that I picked up from a shop that was going out of business. It is designed to dispense small bottles of acrylic paints. So far, it is holding my Folk Art acrylics, my Making Memories Acrylics and my Glimmer Mists. As I unpack more, I'll see how much will fit into it.



One corner of the room has a different type of workbench on it. This is because I already had this length of workbench which I had used on the Scrapperdashery stand at Stitches last year. It seemed a pity to waste a perfectly good piece of workbench. This will be my "wet area". I have a water cooler that supplies 4 litres of water which I just refill from the tap when I need a top up. It even has the facility to chill the water and dispenses either chilled or ambient temperature depending on what I want. Not bad for £50, I thought. I also have a little kettle so I can make myself tea and coffee. At present it is also the home for my iPod speakers, and anything else that I bring up from the house, but that may not stay that way as I have other plans.



I have 40 Display Dynamics paper trays that I bought from the shop going out of business and I have another 9 that I bought years ago at great expense. I've been trying to decide what to do with them. I think they'll go under a workbench, but we'll see. It will be great to have the paper I use a lot out where I can see it.

At the other end of the room, I've put up some of the shelves from Ikea that I mentioned in a previous post. They cover most of the width of the room. Facing them I've placed two of the largest Billy bookcases and backed them with white corrugated plastic left over from the Stitches stand. As you can see they provide me with a kind of storage cupboard so that I can put unsightly things out view. It also increases the amount of space I have for storage by a vast amount. What you can't see in the photo to the left is that I have a frame (you can see two of the parts of the frame leaning against the shelves) that forms a tall cupboard in the corner of the room. This will be clad in more of the white corrugated plastic and will give me a storage cupboard for things that are too tall to go anywhere else. It has a shelf at head height so lots of the tools that I don't use on a regular basis will go there. As will some of the network that is yet to be installed.

I have yet to attach the fixings for the car roof box to the ceiling so that I can store the roof box out of the way when it isn't being used. I also have two of these Really Useful sets which are going to be attached to the wall somewhere.

So, the next week or so is going to be spent with me moving things in slowly. There's about three or four car loads of stuff in storage and I really can only move one car load a day - some of those boxes are very heavy - and I want to sort things out as I move in as much as possible so that it goes in in an orderly fashion. I hope this weekend to start moving in some of the furniture out of the house but we have a concert coming up this weekend so that knocks out Saturday. I'll see how much I can get done on Sunday.