All I Wanted for Christmas Was a Clean Studio

So here’s an attempt to summarize what has been going on in the clay studio for the past two months. If you’re looking for pottery, you’ll have to look elsewhere. I haven’t made a pot in about two months. I hope I remember how…

What I’ve actually been doing is putting up some new shelves and cleaning every square inch of every surface. I started way back during Christmas Break. And right now I have a completely clean and organized studio which I hope improves my efficiency when/if? I ever start making pottery again. (Don’t worry, before I added the images to this post I got down into the studio and threw about 15 cylinders.)

You might think that putting up a few new shelves sounds pretty easy, but it’s a lot of work once you actually get into it. I had to clear off all the old shelves and tear them down. This included taking all the papers off the “walls” and replacing the plastic on one side of the studio. Then I had to take some measurements and plan out exactly what I wanted. The good thing about making shelves from scratch is that I get exactly what I want!

I made two trips to Lowes, one during a snowstorm. After I got all the wood home I cut it all to the proper dimensions and started putting up a frame for the shelves. This was a little awkward doing it by myself and in such a small space but I managed to pull it off. And the shelves even look pretty level! After the frame was in place I just slid the flat boards in place and nailed them down. Then I started restocking the shelves. I have a lot of stuff, even after filling up a large trash can. I think I have a little more shelf space now for actual pots that I’m working on.

A progressive look at the drying shelves and TV corner:

A progressive look at the new glaze area shelves:

I also remodeled the other side of my “lair” which had previously been my painting studio. I built new shelves along one wall and rearranged the other shelves in a U shape around the edge of the space. I’m a little sad that it isn’t really a painting studio any more but I haven’t actually done any painting there for years. I guess I can always drag my easel out if I find the time to do some painting.

Now it will serve as a place to store and display pots and package  up items that I need to ship out. That’s right, hopefully sometime this year I’ll try selling my pots online.

After all of the construction was complete I vacuumed up all the sawdust and mopped the floors. I even wiped down the other shelves which had collected a fair amount of dust. I also moved some of the old shelves to new locations and cleaned up my wheel, organized my tools and moved some of my old pottery out to the packaging department.

Life is good.