Changing Gears PT.2 - The Cover Up

After a fast paced demolition, Kieran, David and I all worked pretty hard to prepare the space as quickly as possible to aid in the re-fit we had planned. Do you think that worked out as planned? Of course not...

Prior to the renovations taking place, Kieran put his hand up to help out wherever he could. I know words aren't enough, but thanks for being here to help us from the start.

After a consultation with Matt's cousin Thomas at TDM Painting we learned that the walls were in pretty dire shape, soft cement, un-primed paint layers and all sorts of sticky bonding materials used to fill cracks and chips.

A few key lessons we learned which we will share up front... if you ever decide to go down this road yourself.

1. The 6 P's... PRIOR PLANNING PREVENTS PISS POOR PERFORMANCE
2. 90% preparation provides 100% of the results
3. The only shortcut is doing it once and it's not a shortcut..
4. It take a long time.
5. Paint guns are your best friend

The first step in the preparation was to remove as much of the damaged paint as possible. Scrapers, beer and music was our fuel. We pulled a few late nights to get this as ready as possible as our deadline was to have all the prep and paint done within 2 days.

The key to scraping walls is to understand that there is no real winner. Our bodies have never hurt so bad during any process. I believe we found muscles we didn't know existed..

We gave up after finding so much "soft cement" and settled for a good rub down prior to paint. Knocking off the loose paint and leaving hard edges was more important than anything. Lesson learned...

After 2 solid coats of paint by Thomas, our space began to feel more like a shop and less like a dungeon. Don't get us wrong, we loved the raw/unpolished feeling that the shop had before we moved in, however this gave us a big more of a feeling for what we wanted to create. Thomas talked us into using "Builders white" which is a very brilliant and bright white, good recommendation there cousin.

One bonus of being in such an old part of West End is that the pipework and fixtures from times long ago give a bit of character and life... It's a bit of a pity that they're all hidden now.

Remember what we said about the 6 P's? Well here is an example of things we royally cooked. We couldn't organise Matt's step brother (our Plumber) to pop down and handle the disconnection in such short notice, so Thomas (doing as he does) followed instructions and painted over and around our old sink. Later on we would learn why this was not ideal.

In less than 8 days, we had completed so much, removed the stock, scraped the paint, had the walls professionally coated in some premium self-priming paint and prepared ready for Part 3.