The new floor is done, thus completing the final large component of my renovations this year. I can’t say enough good things about End of the Roll and their installer, Jean Paul. The flooring itself was about $1-2 per square foot cheaper than equivalent stuff at Home Depot or Lowes, and the installation was $1 per square feet less than those places too. So, over 540 square feet, that’s a significant savings.

Jean Paul and his assistant Joe were very professional, meticulous and very fast. They finished the entire space, including installing new quarter-round at the baseboards in one day. They moved my furniture for me, and even hid the Ethernet cabling under the baseboards, so the place looks very tidy. Afterwards, they swept, vacuumed, and carted out all of the dust, packaging and garbage that they’d generated during the job. I know that if I’d attempted this job myself, I’d probably still be working on it in a month, and it wouldn’t look nearly as good. The only hitch was that my bathroom and closet doors need to be shaved down so that we can attach the reducers that connect the new floor to the old floor.

The final step is to paint the baseboards and quarter-round black. I’ll get the paint today.

Fresh blueberries, strawberries, almonds and yogurt. I love summer.

I forgot to add the ground flax seed before taking the picture, but it was mixed into the final product. The flax seed slows down your body’s absorption of the fruit, so you get more bang for your breakfast buck. Great source of omega-3 fat too.

In other news, painting is done at my place. It was a huge job. It required about 8 gallons of paint, and several near-death experiences on ladders. I probably could have gotten it done sooner, but I was tied up with working, and sheer non-interest in the tedium of the job. However, now that it’s done, I’m pretty happy with it. Yesterday, I also removed the carpet from the studio area, so it’s down to bare concrete now.

New floors are supposed to go in on Monday. I chose a Cumbrian Maple laminate.

I think the dark color will help “ground” the room, since the brightness of the walls have really opened it up. My Monday floor installation schedule might be thrown off though, because I might be hired for a full-day shoot on site that day. I would have to postpone floor installation until after my Chicago trip next week. Either way, I’m pretty happy.

If everything goes ahead as planned, I’ll have a new floor by Monday night. If I have to change plans, I’ll make some money to help pay for all of this!

The Chicago trip goes from Thursday until Sunday next week. We’re taking Big in Japan to the mecca of improv, the Chicago Improv Festival. We’re pretty excited to be playing there. We’ll be playing at the Second City Skybox on Friday, June 6 at 9pm.

We’re so ready for this trip. For the last couple of months, Big in Japan has been blowing the roof off of the Savannah Room shows. Our rehearsals have been intense and productive. We have our own show now, called Big in Japan OMFG which runs every Tuesday night. And every night, I feel like we’re doing great work, advancing our style. We’re feeling invincible up there. Even last night, when most of the team was involved in the Combustion Festival and couldn’t make it to OMFG, Sean Magee and I did a two-person set that rocked hard. I can’t wait to take it to Chicago.

UPDATE: I’m hired for that full-day shoot on Monday. The floors will have to wait!

I haven’t posted much about what’s going in in my life lately. Nothing bad is happening. Lots of good things have, actually. Here’s a few highlights:

• Jason Mraz concert with Hesi. That was a lot of fun. We got there late, thinking we’d missed some of Jason Mraz’s performance, but it was just his opening acts, which were also fun. I particularly enjoyed Bushwalla, a hip hop artist who wasn’t afraid to be a bit goofy, but still made serious music.
• Renovations are slowly getting underway here, as you might have guessed from my recent entries. I purchased paint today, and got a ladder in here, so there’s really no excuse not to start painting. That’s going to begin on Wednesday. I’ve also torn up the carpet a bit to see what’s underneath, making sure the floor is in good shape for putting laminate on top. I’ve decided to pay to have someone else do the flooring, partly on the advice given in blog comments here. Thanks folks.
• I did a full weekend intensive workshop with Zach Ward from the Dirty South Improv theatre in North Carolina. It was great to get a refresher workshop on improv. I haven’t had any critique of my improv for quite a long time, and taking the workshop was a great way to get that, from someone who is hella funny and a true master of comedy. I know my improv, particularly tagout skills are improved from having taken his class.
• Big in Japan is going to Chicago at the beginning of June for the mecca of improv festivals, the aptly named Chicago Improv Festival. We’re also applying for the Del Close Marathon in NYC, which happens in August. We’ve been there for the past two years running, so there’s a good chance we’ll go again. I’m excited about the team. In the last few shows, I think we’ve done the best improv we’ve done as a group in ages. We’ve got shows every Tuesday night at the Savannah Room.
• I taught a three-hour photography workshop at a high school in Oakville today. I enjoy this kind of volunteer work. It allows me to corrupt young minds with my own particular ideas about art and photography. Muahhahaha! When I got there, the teacher was leading a drama class. She’d already told them I do improv, so they demonstrated their improv skills for me. They were so into it. I offered to come back and do an improv workshop with that group later, which would be a total blast.

That’s all I have to report for now. I suppose there’ll be more boring pictures of my renovations to come soon!

Well, I’ve finally got my furniture moved around. It helped enormously that some university students found my Craigslist ad for my old desk and picked that up for $25. I also sold them the Couch From Hell, my 200 lbs of pull out bed from the 70s. That was a bonus, because I didn’t know how I was going to get rid of that thing!

Now, my studio space feels spacious. My living room is slightly cozy, but I still haven’t figured out how to arrange my furniture in there. It’ll do for now though.

The next step is to paint. That begins next week. After that, new floors. I have almost decided to pay someone to do the floor installation for me. It’s a big job and there are lots of things that can go wrong with it, so allowing the pros to do it will get it done quickly and let me get back to work faster.

As for paint, I did a Photoshop mockup of the colors. I’ll be using a light cream color and a chocolate brown. I am still deciding if I would like to have some accent walls in blue. What do you think?

For the last year I’ve been tossing around the idea of renting some studio space. The main reason is that I often feel cramped shooting in the small corner that I’ve set aside for a studio. I often feel cramped working at my computer in the other small corner I’ve set aside for this. But, is buying more space the only way to get more space? I don’t think so. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I can make better use of the space I have now, instead of increasing my monthly expenses. All it’s going to cost me is a lot of hard work.

One of the things I have to think about is all my computer stuff. Computer stuff is important to me, so there’s no avoiding this. I don’t want to lose any functionality or convenience because I’m shifting things around.

Here’s how things are right now:

The first diagram shows all the computer stuff I need to maintain, and where it is located. The second diagram shows a very rough floor plan of my place, which is not to scale, or necessarily even the right shape. I notice that I even got the shade of green for the loft wrong. Nice!

I have realized that I do not need a huge bedroom, and that space would be better used as a living room. That would free up my current living room to be a studio. My current studio would become an office.

Here’s how it would look in diagram form:

Ahhh much more spacious. I’m also planning to redo the floors in the new shooting area and my kitchen/lobby/office area. Instead of carpet and vinyl flooring, it will be a laminate/hardwood. I’ve also picked out some paint colors to completely repaint the interior, all the way up to the 16 foot ceilings. But that is a story for another day. This is going to be a busy spring!