Lately, this is what I am doing when I am not painting or messing with this site – trying to build us a living space so we can quit living out of boxes. The demolition is near done – and I hope the building part will be a lot more fun. I envision a lot of trap doors, secret compartments, foldout furniture, piranha with lasers on their heads, and other things. Money being an issue, I suppose we’ll be just be happy to have walls and a floor again.
I haven’t posted much about it here, but since it has kept me from site updates for a while now, I thought just this one post to let you know where I am and have been would be good to do.
Long story short – Beth and I came out here from the Boston area so she could be near her family, and so I could be 1,000 miles closer to mine. Her ex was leaving their old apartment, and it was going to be a great place to stay and launch our convention plans and art shows from.
The kicker, was that it was a bit of a mess – how much of a mess, I could still not believe even when we had been cleaning for months – after many weeks of seeking caring homes for sickly cats, after huge dumpster rentals, after hundreds of trash bags purchased, after shoveling feet down through things I’d rather not mention in order to find the floor… we finally were able to walk through the apartment, but not without breathing masks and rubber gloves.
Cleanup took last October through this May. Teardown and ‘minor’ cleanup has taken since then – I needed to take out ceiling, walls, insulation, wiring, flooring, layers of additional tile and carpeting, sub floor, and in several places the studs and beams supporting… yes, the smell and the grime was *that* bad. Add to this extreme water damage from a long-neglected roof leak, faucet leaks and other things which carried the ick deep into the now rotting wood.
Then there was a delay, not being able to get the materials to tear down further or to rebuild – but thankfully one of my paintings, “The Machine” sold at the best possible time.
Now, at long last I am finally to the stages where I start to put wires back in, walls back up, floors back down, ceilings back up, and start trying to track down cheap fixtures for the kitchen and bathroom, lighting, and other things… oh – a furnace… a furnace would be good.
Hopefully we’ll be able to be somewhat creative with this space design – given that I really need to get back to art, and really need to start putting funds into getting out and doing conventions, we might need to make a lot of compromises along the way.
Our end goal, never mind the spinning doors and secret passages, is simply to have a roof of our own over our heads and our things out of boxes, hopefully before Halloween. We aim to make Windycon in Chicago our official return to conventioning – seriously, I’d just be happy being able to devote my days to art again.
If you would like to support this cause in any way – we’re not the types to say “OMG WE NEED DONATIONS!!!”… What we could use: Print and Art Sales through my store here or at Ettadiem.etsy.com, and new clients.
Advertising design and web programming are my strong points – but I am also finishing up my last commission at the moment – and will be able to take on one more commissioned painting come October.
If you would be interested in the commission you can contact me through this site. If you know people who need design or programming done, please send them my way. And if you like my art, and would like to own a print someday – let me know what you need to make today the day… within reason, I’d be happy to wheel and deal this week.
Thanks for reading,
Myke Amend