From Shop To Studio: Dust Bunnies and Mezzanine Flooring
The first task at hand; remove the dust. It’s everywhere, and I mean everywhere. After being home to an industrial welding shop for the past 3 years I can’t even begin to explain this dust. At first glance I didn’t realize, but when I started up the shop vacuum and started removing the more obvious sections I realized that there was a 1/2inch on every surface imaginable. All the walls, the floor, the overhead beams, the stairs, literally every nook and cranny. I spent all of the first day just putting a dent in the downstairs under mezzanine area. My morale was high, I was eager to get the dust gone and just kept plugging away for three more days.
Dani’s new bff: the vacuum.
On Monday I moved to the upper mezzanine and realized the overhead beams were covered and so was the floor. I began feeling overwhelmed at how big of a project I had really taken on and the scale of the whole thing. Luckily my friend Charlotte who loves to clean and has a serious attention to detail showed up with an industrial suction shop vac, a face mask and a serious sense of getting the job done, perfect timing morale was restored and we got to work. We finished the upstairs much faster than I imagined with this beast of a hoover and many hands do make light work. Charlotte is actually in the middle of moving house but needed a break and used this dust fest as an excuse to ditch the packing process, I described it as the lesser of two evils. Nonetheless, the upstairs dust was conquered and we could move onto phase 2 for that area, flooring.
The following day I took a break from the dust to head to Squamish to get the flooring for the mezzanine studio area with Quinn. Quinn is my designated carpenter and most easily described as my potential future brother in law, but in the longer roundabout way, my boyfriend’s, sister’s boyfriend. Our mission was to find something affordable and more importantly in stock. With the times of Covid, ordering things online and waiting forever wasn’t something we wanted to do.
Under the direction of another friend Ty, a recently graduated interior designer, we had a colour in mind and went forth to Home Depo, Rona and Wall to Wall Flooring. New things learned in this process were the difference between laminate and vinyl. After much debate we decided that click-together vinyl planks was the best option for a yoga style studio for cleaning, durability and the look. Vinyl is able to get wet and if you ruin a piece of the floor you can replace it with a spare plank, both of these were factors in the decision making process. After you stare at similar oak flooring choices for a while they all start to look the same. We wanted a warm oak feel that would also tone in with the wood that we were planning on using and staying away from the grey tones. We settled on Cheyenne, a nice oak colour, in stock and on offer. Perfect. We loaded it into the truck and headed back to Whistler to unload and get ready for installation.
“You also have to run the business, stay connected with your clients and start planning for opening.”
In the meantime whilst setting up a studio you also have to run the business, stay connected with your clients and start planning for opening. In the past I’ve learned that these things cannot all be done by one person. The best way to figure this out is to try and do it on your own and reach complete burnout before caving and delegating off some tasks. You can learn that the hard way (which always seems to be the path I take before admitting defeat) or you can realize that there are other people who are better at doing these things and have them take over them instead.
I went right into a meeting with Hannah, a client who takes the class and has used the quarantine time to take some online courses to boost her skillset. Hannah will be taking over the social channels and re-vamping our branding on those. We will also be using our socials to release follow alongs with the studio progress and giving everyone sneak peaks and teases. Although these things take time to set up and have meetings about, I believe they are vitality important and can’t be forgotten in the frenzy of trying to get renovations done. Staying connected with your clients and having them be able to follow along with the progress makes me feel like they are involved even if just spectating from afar.
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We are laying the foundation for all the future things to come.
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I couldn’t face another evening of dust so I called it quits for the night and headed home to deal with the no food in the fridge, no clean clothes and total tornado of a mess that has accumulated in a very short time since signing this lease. Along with neglecting my home duties I also have been neglecting the basics of drinking enough water and eating meals, apparently everything slides when you have a project. My lungs felt sore from breathing in all the dust and despite feeling like I got nothing done today Charlotte reminded me that not all progress has to be tangible. We are laying the foundation for all the future things to come. Back to it tomorrow.