Construction
Our Custom Doors are done!
This is the cool part. The doors we designed showed up today. When I designed them back in February, we were thinking they’d be pretty cool, but this is miles beyond what we were expecting.
Fred Shafer was able to take a Google SketchUp PDF and create an absolutely awesome door out of a 36″ X 96″ solid-core door. He stained them to match our Ikea desks perfectly. We’re REAL excited to see them installed in a few weeks.
I’ll bet he could get $2,000 a piece for these…
Recent Space Visits
So we’re kinda stuck until we get Electricity to the suite, but I stopped by and snapped a few shots of the build-out as it stands. We’ll take a few more when we’re there tomorrow, but we wanted to test the latest version of the slide-show plugin, so this gives us an excuse to post some more.
HVAC Pipe is complete, the walls are all up, and we’re about to get moving again…life is good.
Lighting Ideas
We hit a roadblock today…
Some aspects of our build-out weren’t quoted correctly, and the lighting we’d picked out was about 3X what our budget allowed. Not a good problem to have.
I’m now scouring the net looking for cool ways to light the space on a budget. I think I have a way to use those drop-ceiling fluorescent lights to do something cool, but I’ll have to buy one and play with it to see if it’ll work.
We bought one of these BlueMax fixtures on Friday, and it arrived today. It casts a LOT of light, but it’s too “blue” for us. Geoff and I tried it in the space. Looked too “sterile” for us.
So I started looking at other offices to see what they’d done. It appears that the other tenants in our building spent a lot of money on their fixtures. I think we can do it for 1/2 of our alloted budget if we get creative…
The Motherboard Wall - Phase 2
I decided to lay out all of my motherboards to see if I’ll have enough to complete this project. So I started digging in the box, and lying them on my driveway. There was a mouse living in the box at some point, so I had to hose them all off before I put them through my dishwasher…twice.
Looks like we’ll have plenty after all. I may look for a few more to work with. I’m sure I’ll find a use for extras.
So into the dishwasher the went. Cards up top, boards on the bottom.
After 2 cycles on the “Pots and Pans” setting, I need to put them in the basement on their faces to dry for 2 days before we send them off to get painted. One load did 12 boards, and about 15 cards. I’m thinking in 5-6 more loads I’ll be ready to lay them all out to paint.
So painting isn’t as tough as you’d think….but it takes a long time when you factor the drying-time. I can paint about 12 a day. The Appliance Paint that we’re using is SUPER thick and VERY shinny. So you just need to make sure you get it in all the nooks/crannies, and let it dry for about 12hrs. I’ve been doing 12 a day for about a week now, and I still have a pile left. They DO add up quickly though. Hint: Don’t do them at night…do them in the AM before you leave for work. I did one batch at night, and the dew on them in the AM made for rain-spots on them after they dried inthe afternoon heat.
HVAC Begins
Well the HVAC stared to go up and it is amazing how the space that you thought was never ending starts to shrink on you. They had to lower the ducts to compensate for the sprinklers, so they are a bit lower than I anticipated but Doug assures me they are fine.
It’s a Brick….Wall.
(…ok, so that was a lame attempt at a Commodores reference.)
Evidenty, turning a painted brick wall, back into brick isn’t all that easy to do. This particular wall has been painted about a dozen times over the last 60-odd years. It was up to Reliable Contracting to turn it back into a brick-looking wall. (I say “Brick-Looking” because there was one point where we contemplated painting it to look like brick.)
This is what it took to get the brick back to brick. Dwane had to use a grinder with a special wheel to grind the paint off. This patch took about 20min.
Looks PERFECT if you ask me. So we said “Go for it!” and he was off…
3 days later, this is what we were looking at.
…and after a coat or two of sealer…
This is the EXACT mix of “beat up cool” and “modern industrial” that we were looking for. Wait till you see the finished product in a few days. It’s simply fantastic.
Hey. There’s a Van in my office!
This was pretty funny to walk in on. The GC had his guys just drive the van in the office to unload it. Normally, not THAT strange…but we’re on the 3rd floor of the building!
The Waiting Game
And now…we wait.
The plans have been submitted to the City of Cleveland for review. We should hear something back in the next week or so, but it can take up to a month…so I’m not holding my breath.
In the meantime, the contractor has started prepping the space by re-paining the ceiling, and taking the walls back to brick. I’ll post some pictures of the progress in the next few days.
3 Days Progress
Well, here is a glimpse of what happens in three days. Here are 3 shots of the area the bathrooms will be in. We have picked out a few spots that we will take pictures from everyday, and this is one of those. Perhaps we will have some sort of time-elapse slideshow at the end.
The guys are doing a great job so far and we are happy with the progress they have made. They stared with the bathroom walls to allow the plumber to see and do the things he needs to in relation to the walls.
The Motherboard Wall - Phase 1
Here are a few progress pics of the “Motherboard Wall” we’re doing for our office.
What I’m trying to do is use one of the entry walls as a “feature” as well as an art piece. The idea started a long time ago, and we’ve been trying to collect old motherboards, cards, etc. I posted an ad on Craigslist.com a few months ago, and it ended up netting me about 90 motherboards. PLENTY to do what we’re looking for!
The first step was to clean them all. I started with a scrub-brush, but that didn’t do so well. Then I thought “Wait…I’m never going to USE these again. Let’s throw them in the dishwasher!” So I loaded up a dozen to see how that worked.
…and it worked REAL well. They came out VERY clean, but I needed to dry them a little better. The “Sanitize” setting on my dishwasher didn’t dry them all that well. (But they are sanitized now!)
So I set them all on their tops for a few days to let them drip-dry. I didn’t want to paint them and have water spots under the paint. Not that anyone will notice, but it’ll flake off in time.
Now let’s paint them…
I chose a white “Appliance Paint” because I knew it’d coat real well, stay shinny, and be…well…white. My brother looked at it and said it looked like something from Star Wars. I used a primer on one of them and didn’t prime another. The results were that the non-primed motherboard looked 10X better. The Primer needs to be sanded, and that’s not entirely possible with a motherboard. So it ended up looking “dull” compared to the non-primed one.
We’ll be mounting these about 1″ off of a painted green wall, with LED lights every so often both in front and behind the boards. Should look real cool.
More to come.