Wednesday, January 26, 2011

More photo's of second floor studio flooring






Met with Andrew Meyer today, owner of Vermont Natural Coatings, in Hardwick, VT to discuss my studio flooring color. I am looking to add color and protection to the new spruce flooring for my studio and I would love to have the floor be a spring green color, like new grass- refreshing and light. Initially I researched staining the floor but there is not a company that makes a translucent stain in a light lime like green color in a water soluable base. I looked into earth pigment powders that are mineral based- and thought about staining the floor myself, then coating it with some sort of sealer.
Vermont Natural Coatings is a new start up company, a spin off from Vermont Soy based here in Hardwick, and they are making floor and furniture finishes that are water soluable and no VOC from cast off whey product from Cabot Creamery. They are just beginning to offer a line of tinted Poly-Soy finishes. Andrew was very knowledgeable about how finishes work on wood, penetrations of material and how they wear. I brought a small sample of watercolor colored spruce and we looked at a Pantone colors on the computer. I will research what color comes closest to what I want to achieve and get back to them. I am happy and honored that such a company is so near to us, and am excited to be working with them for this venue.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Upstairs Studio Flooring and January Update.

As slow as it seems, there are tiny important incremental changes going on in the building. The central vacuum is in as well as the emergency pull station connections, and a sprinkler system.
On the second floor studio, the flooring is going down- Siberian Spruce, rough cut, like a barn floor. I still have to experiment with semi transparent stains- as I would like the floor to have some color, most likely a soft light green tint. The floor will get a little sanding, as it is so rough it would hold all the sawdust, plaster dust etc. 60-80 grit should do it.
We had approximately nine visitors from Yestermorrow Design Build School, in Warren, VT visit last week, with a thermal imaging camera and lots of questions. It was fun to show off our energy efficient building choices and they seemed very impressed! http://www.yestermorrow.org/

Next up will be finishing loose ends so we can insulate the entire building; i.e pressure testing the upstairs floor radiant and getting some heat upstairs into the tubing, a thousand loose ends. All this must be done before the insulation is pumped in, since the ceiling and walls will not be accessible after that. We are not happy with the pace, but the holidays came into play, a trip to NY to clear snow and check on the house, and Doug has been working other jobs. It is what it is. Rushing any faster would inevitably cause some mistakes to be made.