Ok, so this is probably not the most exciting post, but I wanted to show you how hard I worked yesterday afternoon. My main mission was to clean the corrugated plastic roof in the back and sweep the roof of our tenant's building. I wanted to clean the corrugated roof so I could let it as much light as possible for the work area. It was covered with dirt, leaves and branches.
Before I climbed up on the roof, I caught a Georgia O'Keeffe-like image with the ladder, blue sky and adobe feel. It reminded me of New Mexico.
A two broom job.
See that blackness beyond the brooms on the corrugated roof? That's the caked up dirt and branches I needed to clean. I wish I took a proper before picture, but the whole thing was covered. I must say, sweeping is one of my favorite activities. It is so satisfying and meditative. I listed to Jessica Pratt as I swept my heart out.
When I climbed up, it was during the late afternoon, the golden hour and then sunset. It was so nice to watch the afternoon turn to evening from here. I want to come back up and sketch sometime.
My little shadow sweeping.
You can see the progress I was making here. I pushed all the debris to the edge of the roof and then used a hose to deeper clean.
The north view.
I love that there's still an empty lot behind us. I like seeing the piles of wood, old truck and weeds. I pretend I live in the country sometimes. Here, you can see how clean I got the corrugated roof. Sure, it's not pristine, but as clean as I could get it with the hose. I may hop back up for one more pass. I like how the corrugated texture mirrors the awesome textured garage wall next door.
You can see how bright the roof is now!
There's a lot more light now. A few areas of the corrugated plastic need mending since they leak, but it's not in bad shape. All that stuff on the shelves still needs to be gone through. Let me tell you, I have seen some black widows and boxes full of tetanus nails. Thankfully, no animal carcasses so far. It felt like such good progress today. I can't tell you how big this space looks now! It's amazing how claustrophobic rotten piles of wood, leaves and junk can make a space.
I feel like we should build a little balcony up here so we can watch the sunset.
The next steps will be to:
- Further clean the side of the house and cut back an awful, thorny vine that's been sneaking in from the neighbor's yard.
- Clean up the built-in work bench (throw out rusty nails, old cans of paint, rotten wood)
- Sweep or hose down underneath the roof and workbench to start with a really clean work area
You can read my first post in this series, Art Studio Move, for a more complete list of what I plan on doing. I will be putting all posts related to this in the Home Art Studio Project category if you want to follow along.
I won't post any pictures until I get the above list done, but here are some sketches of what I think it will look like when I'm done cleaning.