Lost Art Press

I know it doesn’t look like much, but this is the spot where I will die someday – tools in hand, God willing.

Today Mike and I almost completed installing the underlayment for the new shop floor. We have just one more sheet to install, but it’s a tricky one. As we were shimming things up, the room filled with the sound of a big diesel engine.

The dude was here to help remove the sign from the exterior of our building.

While dispatching the sign took only 35 minutes, it was a significant psychological step for me. Neighbors gathered to watch the purple plastic “Blaze” sign come down in pieces. And with the sign gone, it finally felt like it was our building.

Today I also received shipment of our solid-oak flooring – 54 bundles of the stuff. It will acclimate in the new shop for a week before installation. Then the guys at Lovell’s Hardwood Flooring will do the rest. And thank goodness. I have to start building two tool chests starting Saturday.

— Christopher Schwarz

Though we are screwing down endless underlayment at the Lost Art Press building, my mind is hard at work designing the space for what we do: building, research and writing. At the heart of this is our library, which now spills into four rooms of my current house (plus the boxes in the basement).

It’s my hope to make this library available for other nutjobs who are willing to dig into old paper. But we have to have some way to organize everything.

When I think of this, my eyes turn to the 27’-long wall in our new shop with its 11’ ceilings. Could we build one massive unit for our reference library? My first urge is to build a poncy shelving unit with brass bars, library steps and the smell of pipe smoke (calm yourself, Megan).

That’s not me.

So I’ve been gazing at one of Enzo Mari’s designs for library shelves that are built from common materials but are superbly braced. They are clever. These can be strung across the entire wall without it looking like I belong to a country club and have friends with names from the Benedict Cumberbatch name generator.

Check out the images. If you save them to your drive you’ll see they are in high-resolution. Don’t worry. Mari offers them free to anyone who isn’t selling them.

— Christopher Schwarz

With the plaster complete (gosh it’s gorgeous), we are in a mad dash to get the floor ready for the new 3/4” oak floor – the material arrives on Thursday.

Plan A: Yank all the staples from the current underlayment. Level it. Put the new oak over that.

Why Plan A sucked hind warts: The linoleum tiles wouldn’t let the staples go.

Plan B: Remove the linoleum tile and its underlayment.

Why Plan B is when the matador battles the blind cobbler: Another 20 cubic yards of garbage. And two days of sawing underlayment and yanking it out.

So I hired a local carpenter/musician to help me – Mike Sadoff. And he’s a frickin’ worker bee. After two days of work we are ahead of schedule. After we pulled off all the modern layers we made it to the original yellow-pine floor. (I measured how much crap we have pulled out since September; it’s almost 3” of thickness.)

And we found that in the front room, the floorboards run diagonally. (Yes, it’s the original floor and not the subfloor. The subfloor runs vertical to the long axis of the building. This true floor is diagonal and is over that. And it has finish on it.)

The diagonal changes the feel of the whole room. It draws the eye right to the bar.

So I called the floor installers. Can you put my floor in on the slant? Yes. But it will cost an extra $900.

Yikes.

I said yes, and I think I’ll have to sell some tools to make this happen.

Two other fun events today: We removed the bar’s original side door, which is bricked over. The door is a gorgeous Victorian example. Original paint. And a cool Chesterfields cigarette sign to boot. We’re going to remove the bricks and put it back as-is. Too awesome.

Second fun event: This building is a man-eater. Mike was repairing the rotted subfloor by the bar and it swallowed him up – trying to take him to the basement. He survived unhurt.

Tomorrow, Mike, John and I are going to finish installing the underlayment. And then drink a gallon of beer each.

— Christopher Schwarz

Several customers have asked when we are going to open our storefront in Covington, Ky. Here is the schedule for 2016.

Starting March 12, the shop at 837 Willard St. will be open for visitors and customers on every second Saturday of the month, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. We’ll carry all of our titles there, plus whatever else we might have lying around that’s odd or special.

We may or may not carry apparel. Right now all our shirts, hats and sweatshirts are being made on demand. But we might do a special small run of garments for the store. Stay tuned.

You are probably thinking: Are they nuts? Open on only one day of the month?

Yup. We don’t have employees, John lives 100 miles away and I can’t play “store” while building furniture, editing, writing, blogging, designing and dog knows what else. So if you are planning a drive through the area, here’s the schedule for 2016 if you’d like to stop by to talk, tour the shop or pick up some books.

March 12 (this is in conjunction with the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event down the street at Braxton brewing)
April 9
May 14
June 11
July 9
August 13
September 10
October 8
November 12
December 10

We likely will have a book-release party or two this year as well. Details to follow.

As you can see from the photo above, we still have a long way to go to make the place presentable. The plaster work is complete – both front rooms have been completely re-plastered to look as they would have in 1890. We’re installing new windows on the 9th Street side of the building that were bricked over (the city was happy to approve this restoration). This will bring some southern light into the shop area. And we’re removing the bars from the windows so we can escape in case of a fire.

Today I am headed down to start repair on the subfloor – the solid white-oak flooring arrives on Jan. 14. A section of the subfloor by the bar is rotted from an old sink leak. I also need to remove 1,239 staples from the existing subfloor, so I’m surprising Lucy today with an anniversary present of kneepads and fencing pliers.

I do know how to romance the ladies.

— Christopher Schwarz