gallery renovations, phases I and II complete

With dinner parties scheduled starting the 17th of December, we all worked like crazy to finish painting, cleaning, and installing artwork.  Hard to believe we only got started the beginning of November!

For a tour of the space, visit our website www.lyndengallery.com - we'd love your comments!  Still to come, Phase III...

first event after renovation - booksigning for Gale Martin

Gale Martin's booksigning for "Don Juan in Hankey, PA" was our first event in Lynden Gallery's renovated space, and we all worked like crazy to meet the deadline.  Artwork on the walls, hangers in the new closet, rugs on the floor, and everything scrubbed and dusted free of dust.  

Still a bit of painting and shelving construction to do beyond the back wall, but it's coming together better than I could have imagined.  I think I'll sleep well tonight, having been painting the last window until 5 minutes before the event.  Don't look too close - it isn't quite done...

For more pics, see my facebook post.  Next up - two office parties, one on the 16th and one on the 19th.  We'll be ready!

prepping and painting

Feels like we've been prepping and painting forever, but it's really only been 2 weeks in earnest, I think.  David spent a lot of time leveling the concrete floor, filling holes, removing funky existing wires or pipes wherever he could.  

The wall where the frame corners used to be?  A nice smooth plaster base, after several days of layering and sanding, is ready to paint.

And Laura, our gallery intern with a great eye for color, did a fabulous job of matching the mottled, ragged walls of the past.  You'd be hard pressed to find where the old stopped and the new started!

At the back of the gallery you catch a glimpse of my new studio...

with eggplant walls and white trim and soffit.  David admitted to giving me a hard time about the color, but followed by saying, "I know by now I should just trust you with such things, it looks great!"  Now I'm eager to get the dust and dirt cleaned up and settle in, but there is still a wall of shelving to build.

Monday morning the Sollenberger Painting crew, led by Kurt, started priming and rolling the floor.  

Wednesday morning, I came down the the sun shining in across our newly painted floors, and the carpets were delivered last night.  We've been working ever since to clean up, finish the detailing, and started laying carpets this morning.  The day was busy with Christmas framing customers, so updated photos will have to wait.  More to come!

newly relocated framing consult, as the dust settles

The old framing consult area, as it looked on Tuesday morning before dismanteling it with Jeff Mummau, our carpenter extraordinaire.  A bit of a challenge for the two of us to take off the counter top and stand it against the wall, but we managed with his engineering finesse.

Then came the head-scratching task of how best to take it apart and put it back together, slightly reconfigured for the new location at the back of the gallery.  Jeff built it to begin with, but various components had been added at my request over the past ten years.  

Gerry Freeman, G.L. Freeman Electric, mounting an electrical box on the side, doing away with the past need of duct-taping extention cords to the carpet every time an event required coffee urn or crock pot.  This new configuration allows us to do away with filing cabinets and computer equipment on the exhibition floor.

Frames have been removed from the front wall, carpet stripped from the drywall, and the task of repairing, prepping and plastering before painting began that evening.  David and I took a day off yesterday for Thanksgiving with family, work commencing again this morning.  

In its new location, the consult desk is turned the other direction and is about 18" shorter in width to fit centered in front of the new sample wall.  Another flat file will be installed next to the existing one, with deep storage drawers beneath.  Behind the wall, accessible on either side, is a 12-foot deep space to accomodate a conference table.  

Carpet has been stripped at the front of the gallery, and the old carpeted sample wall is nearly plastered. Can't wait to see paintings on that wall, and I'm loving the openess of the space at the front of the gallery.  Ned Wert stopped in today to discuss his upcoming show in October, and was thrilled with the way the new space is shaping up.  

My father, ever faithful with the paint brush, has been working his way around the gallery painting the trim.  My brother Bryan, and sons Zach and Michael, stopped by for a few hours this morning to help tear up tack strips and sweep the floors.  Together we finished off a pot of leftover, homemade, chicken corn noodle soup and banana chocolate chip muffins before sending them back to Philadelphia.

As of this morning, I finished organizing the new sample walls, allowing additional space for two shipments of new corner samples to freshen up the selection.  I was surprised to find how much additional space was available, along with nine drawers of shadowbox moldings, fillets, liners, handmade papers and floater frames. 

With the afternoon sun shining in, you can literally see the dust still floating in the air!  One more dusty, dirty job, Monday a week from now, when they sand the floors before painting them.  I think we'll take some time to seal up the sample walls beforehand, and save ourselves time later.

ralph waldo emerson and color theory

In my travels yesterday to secure some windows I'd discovered a few weeks ago, I found myself coveting this leather-bound collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  This rare 1897 set printed by Riverside Press Cambridge-Boston is a far cry from the dog-eared, paperback book of Emerson's writings I purchased from at street vendor in New York City back in the late 1980's.  Ever since, Emerson's writings have served to ground me throughout my life, informing my sense of self.

"Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string," I quote.  Oh, how often have I had to step out in faith, believing in where I felt my heart was compelled to go!  The answers, and the path aren't always clear. Often we must make the choice of a next step without a clear notion of where it's leading, trusting the path will become clear as we move along it. 

These windows, for example, the door I found in the basement, or the still empty spot waiting for a conference table... the best design has room for missing pieces to be filled in, and a quality of coming together that can't be determined ahead of time.

Enough windows, 58" high by 17" wide, 2 pairs and 6 singles, look like they came from the same genre as our middle-aged fire hall.  They could become cabinet doors on that eighteen-foot spread of wall in the studio waiting for shelving.  Thought it would just be simple, floor to ceiling, 3-foot spreads like upstairs in the loft.  And then I found these....

Meanwhile, color studies on various walls, are defining what to use where.  This process of purchasing a few pints of colors to try is worth every penny.  The light in every room is different and it changes with the time of day or the weather.  Swatches on opposite walls and a few days walking past them, inform my decision.  I rarely end up painting the walls the way I went into a project thinking I would.

Painting swatches near the adjoing room are helpful in picturing spaces as you move through them.  With several gallons of trim paint, just slightly brighter than the old trim, we've been painting all weekend.  My father, always my faithful painting companion when a project gets to this point, has been detailing the windows and doors, while I make my way around the crown molding and baseboard trim.

If you look closely at the photo below, you'll see the door trim and mouldings are in process, brightening the countenance of the gallery space - whose walls are staying our characteristic mottled and ragged off-white.

The studio and adjacent areas, however, may surprise you in the end.  Will have to trust that iron string...

dust and the holidays

It's been a bit dusty around here, and if all goes well, we'll be able to clean up, be painting by the weekend, and have the gallery put back together for the holidays.  Several parties are booked starting on the 10th, so we're under deadline to get it all done.

Above is a view from the side of the new gallery wall.  To the left will be the relocated framing consultation area, and to the right a conference area with my design studio up the steps beyond the brick wall.  

Remember that dark, disorganized print room outside the bathroom?  We'll be improving the lighting and are adding a six foot coat closet to accommodate clients and guests during our events.  No more lugging those metal racks up from the basement and trying to fit them into my office.

Then head back to the frameshop through a well-lit hallway, visualizing art on all the walls of course.  To the right, a repurposed french door has been installed as a pocket door into the new studio.  No telling how long that door has been sitting in the dank basement! 

David in the studio, parging the remaining stucco after spending a week with mortar filling and repairing any loose-fitting brickwork and scraping it clean with a wire brush.  This was the original back wall to the Fire Hall addition added around the 1920's.  This back space was added around 1950 and used to be the kitchen.

Good thing the dirty work is nearly done, because we'll be hosting an extended family Thanksgiving gathering next weekend and I think we're going to need those ten-foot tables.  

peanut butter cookies and plaster

So the detailing begins, and I think plaster is my husband David's favorite medium. He spent a week scraping, plastering and repainting the gallery ceiling before we even got started on the dirty work.

So as he spent the late afternoon mixing plaster of Paris and wrapping the raw top edge of the window well in chicken wire, I headed to the kitchen to bake - my chosen artistic medium. While the porkchops were baking and the rice simmering for dinner, I put together a salad and a batch of Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Cookies. Layne stopped in for dinner, then delivered a hot serving to Lynden at work - how many projectionists get a hot meal on the job?

Combine in a mixer and cream:

1/2 cup softened margarine

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup toasted wheat germ

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

Add the following and whip until fairly smooth:

1 egg

6 tbs. water

2 tsp. vanilla

With the following dry ingredients added in, mix until combined:

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 c. dry milk solids

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. baking soda

Roll into ping pong ball size balls, flatten and score with a fork in both directions, then bake in a 350 degree oven for about 12 minutes.

David's artistry in process....

And mine. I'm going to enjoy it until the dust settles and the painting begins.

who's going to clean up this mess?

Ok, I'll admit it. It's a bit overwhelming at the moment! But I'm excited with the unearthed possibilities of it all. Each step is explorative with it's own narrative, and that is what makes it so much fun.

On the right side, near the corner about shoulder height, I can see layers of paint and history - the same, antiseptic, institutional-looking, turquoisey, blue paint that was on the second floor when we bought the property. It was on every piece of trim, the ceiling, and the 11 and 14-foot ceilings up there - every inch of 2500 square feet. Someone really liked that paint.

We did manage to get the salvaged door up between the mess and the frame shop, which Dave thanked me for this morning.

On that side of the wall, it's orderly, neat, and business as usual. Minus the wheelbarrow, of course.

lynden at lynden

Tonight was the moment of truth... I've been sweating bullets wondering if this crazy idea of mine was going to come to fruition as I envisioned it.

Lynden started the first window, digging away at the mortar around one of the concrete blocks, then following it with sledgehammer blows. What we didn't expect was two rows of concrete block, but he wasn't deterred.

With only one small hole through to the other side, he and David began spelling each other, and spending less time than I would have expected, made it through to the other side.

Cool.

And a neat and tidy pile of rubble after I did my small bit with the shop broom afterward - I got the easy job. We'll see if I'm still saying that all this week as I'm wiping up the thin layer of dust off of everything in the gallery.

And on the other side, a view into the gallery. Of course next week, this is going to look different too.

But I think it's fitting Lynden got the fun part, 12 years later, in the building that bears his name.

windows revealed

The cabinetry is down and the window locations, with curved tops are revealed - they missed the electrical box by several inches, so opening them up is viable - you never know what you are going to find when you start ripping things out, so this was a big question mark.

This was an outside wall, the back of the gallery an addition added in about 1920. The original fire hall was just the front section built in 1882 and was all brick. At some point prior to the rear of the building being added, it was covered with stucco, which you can see at the bottom of the picture where it's been chipped of the brick.

Meanwhile on the other side of the room, the new wall is up on the frameshop side, painted and just about ready for a door. We'll reconfigure the worktable arrangement over there just a bit, and then we can leave Dave alone and out of the dust.

We found the old front door from the building in the basement, which we had replaced when we purchased the property in 2000. It's in the process of having the hardware removed, the old paint stripped off - the rotted part at the bottom needs to be trimmed. Everyone who sees it is suggesting we keep the old stickers on the glass - not so sure about that.

The door handle and lockset is rather cool and retro, so I'm hoping we can shine up the brass and reinstall it. Much to do... need to establish a timeline and priority list, so we don't get too sidetracked in discovery!

gallery renovations underway

After almost a year of planning, we're finally underway! My husband, David has been busy with prep work the last few weeks, stripping up carpet, removing the tack strips, scraping, repairing and repainting the ceiling - (ceiling looks great, don't you think?)

We spent this evening moving artwork out of storage into the center of the gallery temporarily, as we'll be renovating that space first. We'll tear out the existing cabinetry and explore that wall - wait until you see what we're considering....pretty cool, if my assumptions are correct.

A wall is going up between the storage area and the frame shop, giving us even more wall space to store art. Meanwhile Dave Patton, our most excellent framer, will continue business as usual in the back, safe from the dust of renovation out front. We intend to not miss a beat with customer service.

Now, tomorrow we have to move those big tables a foot to the side to make room to get the wall up. Fun.