The Studio, pt 1

Above the garage we have this room I like to call "the studio". It's a space about 24ft wide by 22ft deep. I think it was listed as a "game room" when we bought the house. When a friend needed a place to stay after his divorce, it was known as “Josh’s place”. When my wife was pregnant with our son, it became known as "the junk room", the dumping ground for everything that was in the room formerly known as "our office" and now known as our "son's bedroom". During his toddler years, it was all but lost to us. I'd brave the dust and piles of random stuff to escape into a book or drink a beer and listen to music undisturbed. Slowly but surely I reclaimed the room, chipping away at the junk that was put up here (95% of it mine admittedly), donating some things, throwing away others, or simply finding a decent home for the rest. My wife surrendered her claim to the space and started calling it my "man cave" (she's getting her own office in our home impending remodel).


About five years ago, I started thinking over the space.

I am not one to have a "man cave" in the grunting, crotch-scratching, poker-playing, football-watching, beer-guzzling sense. That image actually bothers me. I needed something else… something that had the Victorian feel of the rest of the house, but allowed for technology in a complimentary sense… something that reflected my "jack of all trades" tinkering mindset… and something that looked like it had been here for 115 years… or more.

With that thought in mind, I recalled the feeling of awe I experienced when my wife and I were touring the various rooms of Hearst Castle. A few of the rooms, Hearst purchased in Europe, had them meticulously disassembled, and then reassembled them inside of a newly built room in his mansion. Most of his other rooms were “gathered together”… this is my definition, but essentially, what they all had in common was a feeling of age. Permanence. History. It was as if the rooms were built in the twelfth century and had been lived in ever since, it’s inhabitants gathering things on their travels and bringing them together in these rooms over generations. I felt I was walking into rooms that were a few hundred years old, not ones that were less than a hundred. There was something to be learned here.

I also had been introduced to the term "steampunk" by a friend of mine. Shawn said "What? You've never heard of 'steampunk'? Holy crap, Bryon!! You of all people I know should know what steampunk is! You are one and you don't know about it? Wow!" He was flummoxed. Shawn was one of a handful of people who had known me since childhood and he was completely right. I have been a steampunk my entire life and I didn’t even know it.

So I toured some more houses and museums, took and reviewed photos, searched online, and looked into this “steampunk” thing seeking a design for “the studio”. I did some sketches and gathered ideas together as photos and notes in my computer. I did a lot of this. Heck, I still am.

As some of you know, I was fortunate enough to come into some free lumber. Not a lot, mind you, but I stumbled upon enough weathered lumber to use in the studio and give it that sense of age and weight. There were several white oak 4x6s chunks around 2.5 feet long and three 2x6s at 5.5 feet long. There were also some large pieces of mahogany, 3x16 and 5.5 feet long inches long. I got lucky. To me, these were the components necessary to build my bar.

My grandfather gave me his 1960’s vintage Shopsmith about nine years ago to help me fabricate the parts necessary to maintain an old house. (Thanks, Grandpa!) This tool, above the others I have acquired, is invaluable.

My ideas started making the leap from my brain to paper and even into physical shape... but I wasn't content with simply buying things at the local hardware and furniture stores.

Hardly. I started building.

First, I tore out the closet and built a cellar (aka “cold box”). Then I installed beer faucets and started building a bar. Embarrassingly enough, that was about a year ago. I’ve tweaked some designs, cut some lumber, and re-tweaked some designs. Along the way, I have made a few strategic purchases at hardware stores and antique shops, getting this bit of hardware or that interesting piece of furniture, all the while taking reference photos when something “spoke to me”.

Now I find myself staring at a "meta-project", a project of projects: "The Studio". It has become a collection of projects that will not be complete until all of the sub-projects are they themselves complete. I have become more aware of my incomplete project workload recently, so this realization bugs me. I have added this new project to the nigh infinite list in an effort to start whittling away at it.

Hence, "The Studio pt 1" begins.