During the last few weeks there has been so much going on at the Anthe Building I don’t know where to start. We are now waiting on permits and inspections (we passed our first electrical inspection last week), so things are at a bit of a lull, which is frustrating and welcome.
Here are some highlights:
HVAC: On and running. I’ve installed humidity monitors throughout the building to get a sense of where we are. The building has never had air conditioning (OK, there was one window unit for all four floors). And we’ve sprayed hundreds of gallons of water to clean the walls and floors. So things are moist. Right now the relative humidity is at 45 percent. That’s OK, but I think/hope we will get it in the 30s, which will be the ideal environment for storing books.
The Floor: For the last couple weeks, the first floor looked like the LAP Chicken Ranch. Our contractor spread five garbage bags of planer shavings to continue soaking up any oil on the floor. It worked (though my neatnik urges were tingling). This week, Megan and I will apply a finish. I’ve been doing adhesion tests with shellac and oil-based varnish to see what combination of finishes will work best for us. Mostly, we’re trying to keep the small amount of remaining oil on the floor off of our shoes.
Electrical: The electrician removed all the unnecessary conduit and boxes that powered the lathes and mills. Plus they dismantled the dozen fluorescent light fixtures on the first floor from the 1980s. He replaced them with a handful of low-profile LED fixtures. Now we can see the lineshaft in all its glory.
Rough framing: We have some stud walls up for the bathroom and the partition between the storefront and the fulfillment area. But we are waiting for the county’s permission to add drywall (as a firebreak) then the beadboard. Speaking of beadboard, the painter has been painting and glazing ours off-site. We need a lot more beadboard than we salvaged, so the painters are matching the color and the grime from the existing walls.
Upstairs: While we wait for permits and inspections, the crew has dismantled some of the 1970s-era partitions on the second and third floors. This has opened up the space and given us views that are making my brain tick as we plan our future work there.
The elevator: No progress.
The timeline: If our permits and inspections come through this week, we hope to occupy the building in mid-July. That’s a bit optimistic, but that’s how we roll.
— Christopher Schwarz
A bit of confusion. Will you abandon the current building and move all LAP into the new digs?
Nope. Classes will remain at Willard Street. As will all my machines and the library. Eventually all editorial operations will be on the second floor of the Anthe Building. But that will take a couple years to achieve.
Sorry if this is a weird remark.
When you mentioned the oil, I was wondering what type of oil it would have been, and then it struck me that along with various mineral oils, Whale oil used to be commonly used, both as a machining lubricant, and for lubricating machinery, and the building and machining works are old enough.
Hope this doesn’t offend you.
Supposedly Jojoba oil was what was finally found to be an effective replacement for the Whale Oil.
Thanks for the update–it is very interesting to watch your progress. How far is the Anthe Building from your current location?
Three-quarters of a mile. We walk there.
Great progress. The walls look wonderful. Can I ask, what are the ceiling made of? Is it also beadboard?
Go old school with the toilets. A salvage place nearby has a couple that are shaped like swans. You swing your leg over the swan’s back and sit on the seat, holding the swan’s neck.
The ceiling in the storefront and toilet will be beadboard. The ceiling in fulfillment is black painted joists.
Thanks. I was thinking about that picture of the 3rd floor, that shows what I’m guessing is the original ceiling.
It is sheet steel and is original.
Cool. I hope it can be saved. I had “tin ceilings,” as they are called locally, in several rooms of an 1887 house I owned. They put calcified on them way back in the day, and had to be scraped and washed, thoroughly, before paint would stick.
Congrats on the progress. Waiting for permits and inspections can be frustrating, I know, just having installed solar. I can imagine that everyone is anxious to “gitter done”. As I recall, you live in the second floor of your current building. Will you be moving your living quarters to the new building, as well?
Nope. We are staying at Willard. As are classes and my machines.
looks great! looking at these pictures brings me back 30 yrs to my loft in OTR on West 12th, the American case and luggage. it didn’t have the oil soaked floor but it had similar partitons and an old manual elevator, you pulled a steel cable to go up/down.
Splendid. Love the ceiling.
Carry on!
For stubborn oil spots it may be worth trying Oil Dri, or some similar specialized product. The guys working on our oil-fired heating equipment use kitty litter. I infer that this is similarly effective but cheaper.
Amazing progress Chris, it is looking grand.
Beware the elevator…
If you need somebody like Otis or Kone to go over it/certify it for an inspector, expect a long, long lead time.
Here in California you cannot occupy the building without the elevator certification.
Otis and their ilk do not care about timelines..
Good Luck,
Jeff
Great indoor rafter tails. Office? Bathrooms?
We have them in the storefront and surrounding the bathroom.
What is the status of ordering things? Should I wait until you have the Anthe building fulfillment center ready?
Nope. We are fulfilling all orders as per usual. Our shipping service still has all the inventory and ships asap.
30% humidity looks a bit on the dry side to store people…
I look forward to these updates. Renovating a century-old machine shop scratches me where I itch. Please keep them coming!
Holy heck! You guys are doing great. So cool to watch this progress.
As to the floor I have used D&L hand cleaner to remove grease/oil stains from hardwood floors. It will clean it up pretty well and has a lanolin base if I recall correctly. It can be found at the auto parts store. Why someone would need to have this info in their vast warehouse of useless information is one of those things best not asked.
I hate to be pedantic, but you should change “fire brake” to “firebreak,” or maybe “fire break.” The term refers not to the act of stopping or slowing down fire, but rather to the physical barrier created to stop or slow down fire. (As Yogi Berra said, you could look it up.)
Anyway, feel free to delete this response if you hurt yourself rolling your eyes at me. And in the meantime, congrats on the progress on the new building. My own background is more in building renovation than woodworking, so it’s interesting to see your process in the Anthe Building. From the outside, it looks like it’s going well.
My fault – blame the editor! (Brake made sense…so I didn’t look it up, but should have.)
Yup, “brake” certainly made sense to me too as I read it, but it rubbed me wrong and I had to look it up to be sure. What a crazy language we live in!
I want to know about the elevator. There’s an old building in my small town that has a freight elevator that works effortlessly, because it was retrofitted with an electric motor about a hundred years ago. That kind of thing is pretty rare out here on the prairie, where multi-story buildings have never been very popular.
The progress is looking good. I’m definitely interested in hearing the results of your floor sealing tests.
Thanks for documenting this. It’s exciting to follow and it’s looking good!