Here is my studio in the barn after everything was moved in from our basement in the old house. As you can see, it is pretty crowded. I have started to unpack and get things organized but have discovered something rather disturbing.

Although we have had the floor finished for months, it is still off-gassing severely. In fact, with the windows closed, the smell is so overwhelming that in about 15 minutes, I start to taste it.

I had noticed the smell before, of course, but before the AC was connected, we had a habit of leaving the windows open a lot, and so the smell wasn’t as apparent.

This will be the sewing area. Those black things are plastic-covered bolts of fabric left over from my career as a clothing manufacturer years ago. The checkered thing is a rolling cart to hold the fabric bolts—very handy.

I have talked to Janver about the floor issue. He called the finish manufacturer and discovered that if the material is put down without the added catalyst, it will never stop off-gassing. We did put down a second coat and we did not use the catalyst in that, so we will need to put down another coat over the floor. Of course, we only find this out after we have moved all this stuff into the space.

Down below on the ground floor of the barn, the rest of the stuff from the basement and our big storage unit waits for move in.

An excellent thing that happened earlier today is that I went to the planning department to solve a problem with the septic permit. I got it taken care of with relative ease and then called Kai. While I had been there, the inspector had been to the site and agreed to OK a Temporary Occupancy Permit. This is a permit to move in at will.

I went back in and discovered that all that was needed for a final on our building permit was a sign-off from Planning and Fire. I will go back next Wednesday specifically to talk to the Planner.

I took this picture of one of the double corbels on the veranda so you could see the checking in the wood (the large cracks.) All the pine in the courtyard and veranda will continue to check a lot because it was green wood when it was worked.

The sheet metal contractor’s assistant thought the checks were deliberate saw marks to give everything authentic flavor, so I had to set him straight on that!

The lights in the shower were installed—finally. The electricians found that they needed the tile shaped to accept the cans and did not want to try to do it themselves for fear of messing up the tile.

We had to get one of the tile guys back up to grind out a circle for each fixture. We heard him grinding away and when he came out, he looked like a ghost from the white tile dust!