Material girl

I'm definitely material girl, not Madonna's stile but literally. Give me a new material and I'll will find what to make from it. Not that I invent a wheel again. It's just for myself new experiments . For example after building a shower bed, leftover from concrete went into concrete bowl making and later I added leftovers from plumbing (pipes) and made concrete lamps (still in process of being working lamp, but these are small details, I'll post finished product later), then after mudding shower walls with thin-set, leftovers of thin-set were used to make  concrete planters/cups. It's kind of "eco/recycle" part of me :)

 But.... first was darkness..... the hard thing - reno continue part of mudding and sanding after. I was pretty optimistic after first layer light sanding. I didn't believe the guy from YouTube when he said that the hardest part is sanding. You remember "Karate kid I" first lessons of karate, where Mr. Miyagi  teaching the ABC's? Three scenes - " Wax on Wax off", "Right circle, left circle", "All in the wrist: up, down, up, down". Well... all week was pretty much "up, down, up, down" (the mudding part) and then "wax off and on" and plus "circles" (the sanding part). I discovered that my body has too many muscles that I wasn't aware of. And was very happy and very ready for primer paint shopping, because that meant that "wax off wax on" part was over.

Vacuum cleaner was used to gather the sanded dust from floors and walls. You can see the difference between the vacuumed part and not

Joke of the week:
My son comes home from school and finds me lying on the couch in front of TV. Looks at me worried. "Are you sick?" Funny, this question never arise when he sees his daddy in that position :)

Reno - it's not a process it's a condition

...and looks like that I'll be in that condition for a while...

The last step in drywall process was more like making and playing puzzle. The view above the head – shower ceiling. I didn’t want to go too low with even part of ceiling, so the big pipe would be exposed. It’s not show room, the main point is – comfortable height. Also needed to frame separately water  valve , just in case we’d need to open the ceiling part for that later.

So playing some puzzle and cutting some puzzle pieces. Good thing that with this officially drywalling is DONE!!! 

 Also found some neat tools and materials for better finish. Very cool drill bit for drywall screwing. Makes a neat small dimple into the wall not allowing to go through, but just enough to keep perfect pit for compound material. As well, I looove Flexible Metal Tape and all these Paper-Faced Metal Corner Beads, makes work so much easier and nicer.

 I pet myself on the shoulder that I decided to go with DUST CONTROL Drywall Compound. Yesterday after first mudding layer I decided to sand a bit before the second layer. You can visually see how all dust go down and practically nothing in the air. No clouds of dust that I saw on YouTube for my education as drywaller :) Now looking at the pictures I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe there is a hope that I'll make to the end :)

 Meanwhile .... because my kiln is in exile (can't find place where Archie wouldn't find it and try to sniff or taste hot kiln) green ware of metal clay pieces, that were sitting on the bench for some time, getting some shape. Still in progress, but I like to make sometimes macro photos before finishing to see if I missed some details or how it looks via camera eye.

Still can't decide what to use for the center, I have a few cabochons and piece of raw amber. Will see how much the hole shrinks and how the colors will play at the end.

 My threaded construction piece with some mokume gane inlays, but that will be visual just after firing.