Girls and Construction

Wow. What a weekend. I was very fortunate to have some help this long weekend on studio renovations from my good friends Kara and Amanda. We worked for about 4 hours on what seemed like almost nothing. I finished putting in the main portion of the flooring tiles. Amanda cleaned the copious amounts of tape and stickers off my new filing cabinet. And Kara painstakingly cut tile pieces for all the funky corners in my office.

We started at 10am and finished at 2pm. Four whole hours of wading through shallow water. It felt like I was getting nothing accomplished. Amanda was shocked at the sheer amount of tape and it's bitter unwillingness to part from the cabinet. Even with the assistance of goo-gone!

I was pulling nails and screws out of the wall that were so plentiful, the walls looked like swiss cheese. Putty putty putty. At one point in the day, I had the worst screw of my life and ended up having to jack hammer it into submission.

Upon finishing the laying of the tiles, the tape removal and some bad screwing, we all ventured towards peeling off the sticky vinyl lettering from windows and doorways. The goo didn't seem to help, so it was razors, scrapers and fingernails to the rescue. Some pieces came off easily, others required Kara's switchblade.

I very poorly started to spray paint the elusive filing cabinet. I thought black was going to be badass until I found copper metallic spray paint! WOW! Gotta have it fo' sho'! Four cans of spray paint later.......it still looks like a fifth grade craft project. Thankfully Kara's mad skills at using a can of spray paint acquired from her misguided youth saved the day.

With my belly angrily screaming at me to feed it, I herded the girls out of the studio and towards some delicious Vietnamese eatery nearby. We laughed, we cried. We compared battle scars. It was a good day.

I went back to the studio today and grouted the tile that is in my office. While labour intensive (on hands and knees spreading out even layers. Funnily, all I could think about was how I was engaging my core....) it was REALLY easy! Gals! If you haven't grouted something, you gotta try it! It's repetitive, low maintenance and requires a good scrubbing after it's dry to remove the crusties. Kind of like a man.

It took me about 2 hours to grout the whole floor including clean up. Once I was done, I looked down and saw that it was good! Off to the studio I went for another bout of classes (an interview with a salsa instructor. Muy caliente! Did she ever get me sweating). I planned to go back and put on the base boarding, but I needed some more paint around the edges.

So now I've got a big caulk and I'm going to lay that baseboard tomorrow like it's never been lain before!