"Making Room" - Hobby Room / Office

Welcome one and all to another Friday on The Art of Caesura! 

Spring has sprung! And it's time to tell you about a little spring cleaning (or sprucing) that I've been doing.

As I mentioned in this year's blog birthday post, one of my goals for the year is to create an awesome hobby space. After having bought our first house a few months ago, my wife and I are finally able to put our mark on a place. I wanted to turn one of the generic off-white rooms into a modern hobby space / office with an industrial flare. 

I should hasten to add, that I had never done anything like this before. Prior to this project, I hadn't had the opportunity to hone any "handyman" skills. All that was about to change!

Starting from an uninspired off-white, I decided to go for a nice deep, dark colour (Ralston's Bog Oak, if you're interested).

I left the sample on the wall for a week or two. Gazing into its depths, as if gazing into a portal of things to come. 

I finally got a bit of time off work...time to paint!

Good thing PPE is easy to come by. It turned out this was huge overkill, and I ended up just wearing shorts / t-shirt that I didn't mind getting a bit grubby. 

After masking off the baseboards, I did all my cutting in...

Then cracked on with my first coat. "Thick and quick" and "be brave" were my mantras.

With the first full day of painting complete I was feeling pretty sweaty, exhausted, elated, and apparently pretty...surfs up? Call me? Hang ten? I don't know. 

Anyway, with the second day came a second (and thankfully, final) coat. It was a bit soul destroying to be starting back in with the cutting in (which I found to be a total pain in the ass) but once I got on to the roller work it was smooth sailing. 

I was too lazy / lacking another muscular specimen to help me lug everything out of the room, so I'd just moved it all to the middle of the room and painted around it. 

By the morning of the third day the painting was (thankfully) complete and, although it was still curing, I could get a good sense for how the colour was turning out. I was thrilled!

It was then time for the detail work; and I actually enjoyed this bit. It was gratifying turning sub-par sections into greatness with a little careful brushwork. 

The whole impetus for starting this project when I did is that my wife got me guitar wall mounts for my birthday. I'd thought, well I don't want to mount my guitars until I've painted the walls...so that gave me the push I needed. 

After copious measuring and double checking, I settled on the right spots for Vlad and Portia. 

Whilst putting the second one up, one of the screws broke (and you can bet it was a joy trying to get the broken end out of the plug). I managed to get it out, tried again and the same thing happened!!

A few choice words were said (though not too "choice" because I had a little helper with me).

And I did a bit of research, finding that the screws that had come with the mounts were drywall screws, while our walls are cinder blocks, requiring masonry screws. Back to the hardware store. 

I'm quite proud of my invention of the "dust envelope" for catching dust as you're drilling. 

It was fairly intimidating drilling massive-ass holes in my beautiful, newly painted walls.

With my guitars mounted on the wall (I'll show you a picture at the end), I needed a way to stop the door from opening too wide and smashing into them. I didn't want to fix a door stop into the floor and wall-mounted door stops wouldn't have the clearance to protect the depth of the guitar. Enter hinge pin door stop. Like the masonry screws, I didn't know this existed. But as you can see in the image below, my hands were becoming more "handy" every day!

I ordered it online and a week or so later it arrived, only for me to discover that our hinge pin was too thick to fit the stopper. After doing more research, and asking at the local hardware store, it seemed the hinge pin door stops are all a standard size and our hinge pins are just girthy. 

So I said "screw it", took my masonry drill bit and drilled out the hole in the hinge pin to be ever-so-slightly larger and...it fit like a glove and works like a charm!

On to the lights. I must say this was one of the trickiest parts of the whole process, so much so that I didn't take any pictures of the process. I was anxious about electricals, but felt a bit happier having turned off the circuit breaker. It was made monumentally challenging by only having one person (myself) to do the job. After measuring and mounting the base, I had to hold the 5 kg fixture way up over my head for about half an hour at a time while trying to wire the fixture with my other hand. Anyway I succeeded with some small scrap of my sanity left intact. 

I wanted the corner that the guitars are in to be a nice guitar nook. I would have my amp in it and wanted to have floating shelves for lighting and guitar picks and paraphernalia. Maybe a plant. 

First step? You guessed it, measure, measure and measure again. Helpfully, the instructions that came with my floating shelves were in German. I was able to translate them, but somethings were a little lost in translation. 

If I thought drilling an 8 mm hole in the wall for the guitar mount was intense, I had to prepare myself to now drill four 10 mm holes. Jesus. 

Hey! It worked out! I'm getting the hang of this DIY thing. 

I'm in love with how the room is coming. Below you can see the view from my desk as I write this. I love the paint colour, being able to see my guitars again - and it has had the intended benefit of encouraging me play them way more - I love the lights and the shelves. I'm a happy chappy. 

So, the view that you can see below is pretty complete (minus the extra table where my wife and I are on the Hidden Vault of Blackstone Fortress; I plan to move that table out of here). That wall is DONE. Now only three more walls to go! In fairness most of the big work is done; painting the walls and doing the ceiling light were definitely the biggest jobs. I am excited to see the rest of the room come together, and I will share it with you as it does. 

Thanks for joining me on my journey, I'll see you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: Space Marine Codex

Watching: Is it Cake? - Netflix

Next Week: 

Storage solutions...