Rearranging Furniture
Every so often, probably once a year or so, I get the itch to move furniture around. Interestingly, it almost always happens in the studio and almost never in the house. I'm not sure what that means, but recently I got the bug to move things around in the studio.
What got me thinking about moving furniture was Ron commenting that he wanted to re-home one of his big bookcases. Ron's office was the only part of the property to have damage from the big freeze back in February unless you count all the citrus trees we lost, but I'll talk about that another time. In the process of getting the water turned back on after part of the plumbing related to our water well shattered, we flooded Ron's office with the water coming from a broken pipe in the wall and several shattered pipes in the ceiling crawl space. There is currently a rather large hole in the ceiling waiting for some drywall repair.
We had to move most of Ron's stuff out of his office. Books, papers, notebooks, photographs, pictures on the walls, plaques and awards plus the contents of the desks and credenzas had to be moved to the shed or to Ron's workshop. Much, but not all of the furniture also was moved out or put up on blocks to keep it out of the water. Ron is in the process of closing down his consulting business so he has spent lots of time going through all his stuff to figure out what he really wants to keep and what can go. In that process, he decided he only needs one large tall bookcase but not two. Ooooo! A tall bookcase that needs a new home? Yup. Its mine.
I need to point out, to anyone who doesn't know me at all, that I've gotten older. In the abstract, I'm happy about that as the alternative isn't very pleasing, but the fact that I've gotten older means I need more help moving furniture. My husband, of course, has gotten older too but together we still do a pretty good job.
The big bookcase was dollied out of Ron's office, down the cement walkway and loaded into the back of his truck. It was driven around the shed to the front door of my studio and hauled up the stairs, dollied across the porch and across the studio to it's new home. I love it! It's huge and can accommodate all my books on just three shelves. I have lots of room left for inventory storage and display. Very cool.
Of course, to get the bookcase into the corner all sorts of other things needed to move. The Pros - I get to rethink how my studio works; I get to vacuum under things that don't normally get moved; and I generate a level of interest that usually needs some support. The Cons - I'm old, see above, and all this damned moving is exhausting.
These bookcases are a treasure. Ron had to remind me where they came from. They were built by my brother-in-law, John Furman, who is a master woodworker. He builds lots of amazing things. He built these bookcases as a pair with shelf hangers on one side. That way you could have shelves floating between the bookcases. Very cool. He built these for my mother, as I recall, and she has been gone almost 30 years now. Thank you, John.
I've been working on this now of days and it's starting to look like a functioning studio again rather than the explosion of fiber and yarn and tools and looms that it did for a while. I'm about to get back to weaving.