Sometimes, ok, most of the time, I look at the giant mess and have no idea where to start, so I just pick a spot and work my way around the room in one direction. Works as well as anything I suppose. I this case I started with the giant table. This is a dream of a work table, 8′ long and almost 4′ wide, with two shelves. This thing will store 36 milk crates of stuff on the shelves….which is a problem. Some of this scrap glass I’ve been moving between studios for a decade, it’s time to let things go.
Making decisions about things like this is pretty exhausting, I’m not sure why, maybe because I’m not just throwing a THING out, I’m also throwing out all the ideas I had for using the thing. Anyway. I took all of the millions of boxes of gack off the giant table and started sorting it out. I also decided to cut down the giant table to make 3 smaller rolling tables, which will work better in a teaching situation, but will be a multi step/multi week process.
So.Much.Stuff.
This process took a week, I stripped off the tops and shelves and set them aside to use as table tops for my new rolling tables. Then I added new posts to the middle of the table, and cut it in half lengthwise. Now I have two long skinny parts that are 8′ long by about 20″ wide. I added new rails and then cut new shelves using the plywood from my very first show displays that I made almost 20 years ago. Yes, time for another thing to have a new life. I have another complete show set up, so it’s silly to have two, but I bet I’m not the only person who does. Anyway, new blue shelves.
Once the tops were on, I covered them with peel and stick vinyl tiles. I had covered my work tables with carpet, but I hate it, I can’t ever get all the glass chips out, so I’m trying vinyl. I’ll keep you posted on how I like it.
The other table is going into the ceramics department, which also got a complete makeover. Stay tuned for that in week three.
Tasks completed in the shop this week:
- Repurposed the big table into something more useful, all materials used were actually IN the shop, nothing new, just cleaned out the stash. (Part of the stash, I have a lot of stash)
- Repurposed table bases as shelves, freeing up some storage space
- Rebuilt and reorganized glass storage using scrap wood from tables and a glass crate
- gave away 3 crates of glass to other artists
- identified 3 buckets of glass that can go into the recycling stream
- naps. several naps.
Thanks for coming along on this incredibly dusty journey, the public accountability aspect does seem to be working, at least on my end. As a side benefit, I feel less overwhelmed and more productive, at least until I see the other rooms of the shop! Baby steps!