As I tend to do, I came up with a simple plan and complicated it quickly by deciding to fabricate everything that could be bought pre-fab/off-the-shelf. In my head I fabricated windows quickly and efficiently and got them perfect the first time. In reality multiple attempts have been required to complete my "no compromises"approach to almost everything. Buying ready-made hung doors and windows would have made this project almost a snap by comparison. Having said all that, it seems that my fabrication skills are improving and I'm certain that a second attempt at a shipping container space would be significantly easier and likely go together much quicker.....but isn't it that way with everything?
In the past few weeks I made decisions about the main door that I'm installing on the face of the studio. I decided that a standard sliding glass door was definitely out for cost reasons and simply because it seemed boring. Then I decided that I'd build my own heavy 9'x9' glass door and mount it 'barn-door" style on the outside of the container to make a huge opening. This is NO SMALL TASK. The door is made from two huge used commercial glass panes that I'm framing in sheet steel. I then decided that it wasn't enough to buy a pre-made barn-door trolley roller system and have gone about designing and building my own ball-bearing roller system. The plan is set, but damn is it getting complicated and HEAVY fast! Since the decision was made, I managed to build a HUGE table to fab up the door using my neighbor Bill's stash of heavy duty square tubing and metal saw horses. I'm guessing the table weighs 300 pounds and the door should weigh around 600 pounds! I'll soon be calling on all my strong friends to lend a hand mounting it. It's either going to be fantastic or a huge failure. I'm obviously hoping for the former.
The air conditioner has arrived and taken its space in "The Annex" as we are now calling the second storage container. I've also purchased most of the appropriate electrical supplies and tomorrow I intend to get the wall frame lumber needed and a huge load of finish plywood to be ready when the framing is done. Electrical and insulation will then come and I imagine lots of inner trim work will be required to finish out the wall-to-window gaps. Ugh....lots of work left.
That's all for this update. A few update pics are loaded up in Flickr and hopefully a lot of new ones will be taken this coming week.
