Art of Bruce Whistlecraft

Ok bad pun….

So after the insulation went up it was time to board out and make it like a room again.

It took me, with help from my splendid father two solid days to get all the plaster boards in place.

New Ceiling

As suspected there is not a single vertical wall or square angle in the place. Some angles act obtuse when they appear acute! Hmmm like some ancient evil has been lurking here… So lots of trial and error and hundreds of screws. We got quite good at it by the end. It has changed the light quality in the space no end. And the attic is feeling like a room again not a rubble dump.

More loose plaster needs to come off the old wall too. There is still a long way to go. But its moving ahead nicely now.

So people have actually been emailing me about updates on the studio conversion I am doing.

Truth be owned I have not had much chance to work on it of late.
So I took the decision to take the whole of July off work to hit it hard and push it on a lot.
I have a few solo shows coming up and i really need the extra dedicated room to have several pieces on the go at one time, so I need to get this studio sorted out.

So after I got all the old ceiling down I was left with 76 sacks of rubble and wood to get rid of. Several days of carrying all that down two flights of stairs and out into a skip and it was cleared.

Then came about three weeks of finishing stripping the beams. There are some people who should be shot for their crimes against interior decorating. I took upto nine coates of paint off of those beatuiful wooden beams. In one place some idiot had actually put woodchip wallpaper painted light blue OVER the wooden beam…. !?!…
Anyway with a combination of stripping chemicals (Eco friendly water based ones I should point out), many dedicated hours with a handheld steel scraping blade and a few power tool I finally got pretty much all the paint off. I sanded and oiled the wood to stop any more dirt getting into the beams. I will re-oil and wax them again later on when the proper final decorating is done.

Next up was putting in all the insulation so I dont freeze during the winter.

We chose Thermafleece insulation as it is super eco friendly. Its basically massive slabs of felted wood direct from the hill farms. The off-cuts of sheeps wool that are not suitable for clothing are used to make this. So its like giving your roof a wooly jumper. Its great to work with. Cuts with scissors and no mask or gloves needed unlike the nastly fiber-glass stuff.

I cut the pieces to size and stapled them up to stop them falling out before I could get the boards up.
Leaving an air gap for ventilation. Though the nature of the wool should cut down the condensation problem this room has had in the past.
I managed to get all the insulation up in just over a day.. Nice.

I have been amasing scrummy furniture and stuff for the final studio whilst doing this work. I cant wait to get it all together. But a long way to go yet…

So as you may know I have recently moved into a new house. The intention is to turn the attic into a studio..
Well this is how its looking so far after 3 months work..

After ripping out everything which had been botched into the room over the last 100 years or so (like laminate flooring over carpet over original wood flooring, a redundant water tank and two huge sets of rubbish chipboard shelves), I could actually see what needed fixing. And that was… er… everything.
The wall plaster is rotten so that has to come off. There was a leak in the chimney which caused the wall to get damp and the plaster to fall off.. Thats all now fixed and drying ok. The next step was putting in insulation as it gets so cold up there in winter that paint would freeze let alone not dry.. After looking at all the options it was decided that unless I wanted to lose about 6″ of headroom.. Which i didnt.. i would have to take the old plaster and Lathe ceiling down, back to the rafters..
So the day before last i started… and now i am half way… And damn its the most filthy work i have ever done. I am literally black like a coal miner right out of a pit after about an hour of swinging a crow-bar..
This pic is after the dust has settled overnight.. You cant see across the room when its mid job..
Ick!

Anyway onwards and upwards. Another week or so of this and lots of shovelling all the rubbish out and it will be time to put some lovely new Eco-friendly sheep’s wool insulation in and re-board the ceiling.. And then the studio can really start to take shape..