Thanks and curing

Firstly, a massive thanks to Graeme, my stepdad, for all his ongoing help and direction over the phone, while we have been attacking our floor! He's a total font of knowledge and the best resource we could hope to have! Thanks Graeme!!

So time for a quick update on the floor. Bianca and I checked in on it last night after work and the Boncrete had not quite cured, probably due to the last couple of cold days we've had, so we turned the heater on and sat admiring our hard work for a little while, eating some honey-coated cashews Bi had bought! BTW they're delicious, I highly recommend them.

We're going to do another coat of the Boncrete this arvo, so I'll put more pics up tonight.

Nearly time to paint...

More Floor Shennanigans

After fleeing work as early as humanly possible (for once I think I was even more eager than my entire period 6 Yr 9 class, for that final bell to ring! No mean feat, let me assure you) I made my way to the studio, keen as mustard to get the sealent on the floor - and managed to complete the entire office area with the first bucket of Boncrete.

The office area with a fresh coat of almost touch dry Boncrete

Bianca, Marcel and Lara soon joined me and after only about an hour we had the floor of the main area sealed.

In the middle of mopping the sealant on

And yes, it is white, but it dries clear. For those wondering, it's actually quite similar to watered down PVA glue.

So now we're just waiting on the seal to cure. We'll check back this arvo to see if it needs another coat.

Hope you're all enjoying the pics!

A few extra pics

Just a few pics to add to Bi's post - too tired and achy to type... but so elated the sanding is over!

Lara and Bi in our office, doing the last bit of sanding. Those pine boards threw up a heap of really fine dust, and by the end of it, the girls were looking rather gray haired! It was so bad we had to keep the doors closed, hence the terrible photo though the glass.

Industrial vacuuming...

This is a sneak peak at what we expect the boards to look like when we've sealed them.
Pretty, huh? Though they are quite different in colour to the untreated floor, we're quite happy with them!

this is...

our Sunday (joining the this is theme, hosted by Angela, for this week)
Another day of hard work, sanding the floors of our new studio.




the hard wood floor of our printing studio

We are absolutely exhausted...not much to say for that reason...but...we finished sanding the floor and it's beautiful.


the soft wood floor of our office

Back next week...off to bed now ;)

Studio Prep; End of Week One!

My best mate, Sam, arrived from Darwin via Moe on Friday night (yay!), and so I of course put her straight to work in the studio! It's ok, she didn't mind too much! ;) So Saturday morning saw us begin a frenzy of sanding.

Teegs and Sam dressed in their moonlanding gear, sanding that hardwood floor board by splintery board...

After a few initial mishaps in the form of the sander sheets exploding in a puff of torn paper (or as Brendan delighted in referring to them: "catastrophic failures") Sam and I soon got in to the swing of things and the floor was on it's way. We tag-teamed with Bi and Lara at lunch time and they took over the hard work while we located some eats in Kensi.

Lara and Sam replacing a "catastrophic failure"

The tag-teaming continued throughout the afternoon and into the early evening, though we had to call in Brendan and his brute strength to tackle the floor edging machine - that thing was crazy hard to control, we wouldn't have been able to do it without him! Thanks Bren!!
Lara got in to her groove with the sander, and so we pushed on to complete the entire floor area with the 40 and 80 grade's of paper. So now we're ready for the final, 120 grade paper! Go Team!!

Lara and Bianca replacing yet another sheet of sandpaper

Exhausted and dusty, we said goodbye to Lara then Sam, Brendan, Bianca and I picked up Marcel from work returned home to a delicious meal of spaghetti bolognese (again thanks to Bren!), a glass of Ninth Island Pinot Noir and Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. Thank goodness for small comforts!
A very tiring day, but the results are so totally worth it - the colour of the boards range from a pale blond, to a warm honey, to a pinkish red. Truly beautiful.
Now for a bit of sleep before we head back to the coal face tomorrow :)

All fixed and back on track

Yesterday we found out that the mysterious hole was indeed above the staircase of the caretakers flat. Yikes! At least we got our safety goggles back that we dropped down ;)


Brendan & Lara cutting new floor boards

Thankfully it's all sorted now. The great sawing skills of Brendan, chiselling skills of Teegs and floor laying skills of Lara fixed it all up. Thanks guys!


Lara laying floor boards


Teegs finishing it off

We're on to sanding the floors now, which I can't really help with unfortunately. It's quite a dusty job and with the masks on, my glasses get fogged up so I can't see... Booo! I will clean up after it's all finished :)


Sanding the floors...don't they look pretty...

The Good, the Bad and the Holey

This evenings stint in the studio saw the end to us crawling slowly over the floor, pulling out tens of thousands of staples! Yay! One step closer... however we did encounter a minor hitch in the form of a mysterious dark hole. Yes, a hole.

Here we see Lara trying to figure out just what is down there.. to no avail! We went to the floor beneath us, but it's blocked off with a new wall. We have a sneaking suspicion it could be the caretaker's flat... eep!

Anyway, aside from that, the place is looking great!

Greetings!

Ok, so Bianca and Lara have said pretty much all there is to say at this point, but I felt I should at least say hi. I am a total newbie to blogland, (seriously - Bi gave me my first tutorial on this last night) so bear with me while I learn the ropes!
Thanks so much to all those who have wished us well, it's a really heartening and fantastic response, particularly after such a short space of time - I'm glad we're not the only ones excited about I&S!
The only other thing I can really add, which is a bit soppy so be warned, is that I feel really lucky to have Lara and Bi as my partners in this venture, coz as many of you already know, they're two awesome chicks!
Can't wait to get back in to the studio - more pics will be up tonight
- Teegs

Hello and Welcome

Hello to everyone who's come here from Lara and Bianca's blog posts!

There's not much to show here at the moment, but this is where we're going to keep track of our progress in setting up our yardage screen printing business.

Our website is still under construction, but when it's up it'll contain all the information you need re pricing and preparing your files. In the meantime, potential customers please join our mailing list and we'll send you the information as it comes available :)

We hope you enjoy following us on our journey, it's going to be an exciting one :)

Day 2 of DIY

Last night we returned to the space and finished removing the staples in the main room. Looking good!!!

Day 1 of DIY

We actually dilly dallied for awhile as to whether or not the lino-removal would be more hassle than it's worth... or potentially uncover something nasty. But Friday night we went down to the space for a celebratory champas and discovered that the masonite/lino sheets pull up like butter! So that very night we pulled them up within the space of an hour. Ahhh flooboards!





The next day we returned to commence the hard work - pulling up all the residual carpet staples.

It's ours!

It's been months in the making, but the keys to our studio space are finally in our hands!!! And we are sooo excited. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that we'd end up with a studio in this amazing building - the old Younghusband Wool Store in Kensington. Most people have seen it from the railway line or CityLink - with it's unmissable old style warehouse lettering on the side. I love it. And it's going to be home to our business for the next 3 years at least!





A lot of the spaces in the building have exposed beams and lovely flooboards, but ours (the one with the best lighting) has horrible lino flooring (see below). Our first task is to rip this up and expose the boards below. Fingers crossed it all goes well.


That floor has got to go :)

Lara