Posted by Dave Bull at 4:25 PM, December 14, 2012 [Permalink]

With the year-end approaching, I'm starting to think about how best to use the time that I will be 'free' when all the staff are staying at home with their families. There are two very large (and very late) priorities in front of me: 1) get my next print made! ... and 2) get as much work done on workshop construction as possible.

And I've actually made some progress on both of those. I'll post about the design tracing soon, but today, it's that second project - construction. We've had a couple of deliveries in recent days, first of which was some shelving sets from Ikea:

These will be going upstairs, in a long-overdue attempt to organize the chaos of 25+ years of producing print subscriptions. A mass of back numbers, packaging, envelopes, and all manner of supplies are currently stacked in a jumble of cardboard boxes, and Yasui-san has been pushing me for many months to get that room organized. It's been costing us money too, both in her time to sort through looking for things, and in wasted re-ordering of supplies that we already have, and we've finally got moving on it ...

I hadn't even had time to get those components out of the kitchen when the next delivery arrived - a batch of building materials from a local 'home centre':

These are going downstairs, not up. This is the initial batch of materials to begin the insulation and finishing of the new workroom (mentioned back here). It's kind of embarrassing that a half-year has passed since we poked out that door, but I have a pretty good excuse, and it's spelled U K I Y O E H E R O E S ... :-)

It's quite a wide space, and we need a lot of thick plywood to form the sub-floor:

The delivery guys weren't about to lug it all down to the workroom for me of course; that's something I have to do by myself. Here's a photo showing where it is going to have to be carried ...

... all the way down those two flights of stairs into the room at the bottom (around a very tight corner, too). Not a job I think it would be wise to take on by myself just now ...

I've a young helper booked for this coming Sunday, and the two of are going to string joists, level them with custom 'feet' every foot or so, fill with insulation, cover with vapor/air barrier, then lay down the 18mm plywood. Can we get it done in a day? Probably not I guess ... we'll see.