From the Studio: My Moveable Walls

In the new house, my studio is in the attic.  It's a wonderful space with one big problem: low angled ceilings.  Beyond the fact that this eliminates the ability to hang shelves for storage (a problem I am currently working through as I unpack), it means that I don't have a painting wall or a place to put a quilt design wall.  I talked to my contractor about it and he built me two huge wooden walls on wheels!

This means that I now that 4 flat walls (2 sides on each of these wooden "boxes") to work with!  Yay!

However.

Isn't there always a however?

Plywood is not ideal for behind a painting wall or a quilt design wall -- because I want to be able to put pins in the wall. So, what's a girl to do? 

Steve and I headed to the home improvement store and bought several sheets of homasote. 

"Homasote is a brand name associated with the product generically known as cellulose based fiber wall board, which is similar in composition to papier-mâché, made from recycled paper that is compressed under high temperature and pressure and held together with an adhesive. It is ¹⁄₂ inch thick and comes in sheets 4 by 8 feet." 

A pregnant woman and a guy with bad knees carrying heavy homasote boards up to the third floor was a comedic/tragic experience, but we did it!  And managed to laugh at ourselves during the experience.

Next hurdle: we needed to cut the homasote.  We tried a couple of different box cutters and finally discovered that a rotary cutter was the way to go!  Yes, the homasote trashed the blade, but it cut like butter.  Here's the homasote mounted on the walls:

You can see that I put some duct tape across the seam between the boards.

Homasote is a little bit like cardboard.  It's absorbent and likely to disintegrate after continued exposure to water.  So, I needed to seal it.  I bought some primer and went to town.

I ended up doing two coats of primer on each wall.  The first layer of primer absorbed into the homasote so quickly that after I painted the first coat on the second wall, the first wall was dry and ready for a second coat.  The second coat took much longer to dry, which made me feel that the first layer had done its job.

I stapled some batting to one of the homasote walls in order to transform it into a quilt design wall.  So now I have a painting wall and a quilt design wall and two plywood walls (the reverse sides) that I will likely paint and use as decorative backdrops.

I am so thrilled with my new set up!  I look forward to many happy years of making things in this space!

Thanks for stopping by!