Studio Renovation Update

As many of you know in 2011, my husband and I bought a foreclosed Edina duplex to use as a studio and a home. It had really great structural bones but had been abandoned for at least six months and not cared for in perhaps ten years. There were trees growing out of the foundation in the front of the house. There was a destroyed in-ground pool in the backyard. Not to mention the really old and very broken hot tub sunken into the aging wood deck. The inside was just as bad: smelly carpet in the basement, dirty walls and rotting widow frames. Our realtor, Frank Popplewell (http://frankpopplewell.com/), could see how excited we were and supported our vision in spite of the obvious defects. I am certain our family thought we were crazy to buy a house in such a deteriorated condition -- but it spoke to us and we could see the possibilities. Yes, there were a lot of problems, which any homeowner knows equals expensive projects, but there was something about the vaulted wood and beam ceilings and all those windows! As homes go, it was inviting but we could feel that at one time it had some real pop, some attitude, some panache that needed to be brought back to life. We knew we had made the right decision when our new neighbors wistfully told us that before being allowed to fall apart, this space had been, "something special." It was at that point we knew we were meant to bring it back to be something special.

The main floor of the house would be my studio and sales area. The studio area had original 1960 parquet flooring that was damaged from years of people walking inside dripping water from the pool. The kitchen was open to the studio area and had really ugly grey tile that had not been installed properly. The seam between tile and parquet had been left bare with no transition and a half inch difference in height. It looked unfinished and was a trip hazard. There were other more urgent needs however that needed to be addressed immediately. The pool needed to be filled in before it undercut the house. The window frames in my office had holes rotted through and needed to be replaced. The stone retaining wall was falling onto the driveway and needed to be secured. So we learned to live with the flooring and waited for the time we could replace it with something we loved. Last fall the flooring project came to the top of the To Do List and we planned to have it installed during the slow studio time in January and February.

My husband and I spent last fall driving to flooring stores, looking at samples and trying to imagine what the entire floor might look like. We realized picking the perfect floor is a daunting task. Our past home was a bungalow with beautiful dark oak floors - classic and nearly perfect style, so in our minds, any new sample needed to meet that expectation.  If you've shopped for flooring recently you know the debates we had: light tones vs dark tones, hand scraped vs polished, engineered vs solid wood, wide planks vs narrow, herring bone pattern vs running pattern. Because it would be both home and workspace, we had high standards.  It had to look great. It had to be durable. It had to give the house that Pop! it had been missing for many years.

In the end, we walked into Unique Wood Floors ( http://uniquewoodfloor.com/)in Bloomington and within ten minutes found the flooring which met every criteria we needed in a new floor. Andrew, the sales person, was very helpful and answered all our questions about exotic hardwoods. He was very knowledgeable about the woods from Brazil: is the wood sustainably harvested, it is durable, will it age well? Cumaru, also marketed as Brazilian Teak, has warm brown tones, a variety of grain patterns and it looked like it could have been original when the house was built in 1960. As it ages it will darken and develop an even more warm appearance. The wood is sustainably harvested so there were no concerns about the environmental cost of the wood. The samples we took home looked awesome so we booked installation in February.

If only it I could end my posting with a snap of my fingers and a picture of the finished product! Any homeowner who has done a renovation knows that nothing goes as planned or finishes on time. To save some money, we decided to do our own demolition of the old floors. Investing sweat equity is hard work but it's a great way to save money that can be put into some other part of the project that people will actually see in the finished product. We had intended to start in mid January but I came down with bronchitis and couldn't start demo until into February. To say the demo of tile and parquet flooring was tough would be an understatement. We spent days breaking up tile, then hauling it outside to the dumpster. We pulled what felt like a million nails that had held the cement board to the plywood underlayment. The dust was everywhere and we ended each evening covered in fine grit.  In the end, all the old carpet, parquet and tile was taken away in the dumpster and we could get started on the install.

We're not shy about doing demo, but we knew the actual installation needed to be done right. We've heard horror stories about botched install job and tossing away thousands of dollars of wood. We hired a professional, Phil Mieseler of Innovative Construction Services. Phil has years of experience working with exotic hardwoods (as well as tile) and came highly recommended. On first inspection, Phil told us the floors had high spots that would need to be planed down to a level point. He would need to plane the subfloors so the plywood we had hoped to save would need to be torn up and removed. After a few more days of dusty work on our part, and a few days of planing, Phil was satisfied the floor was level and began installing the first runs of Cumaru.

After walking into the studio to see the new floors, it was love at first sight! Phil did an excellent job choosing a mix of lighter and darker wood tones to show off the wide range of Cumaru. I had the impulse to never put any furniture in the room to preserve how beautiful it looked as one unbroken space. As you can see from the images, I did force myself to furnish the sales room and cover some of floor with rugs. The studio remains an open area and I love shooting in such a nice space.  

After the Cumaru was fully installed, we started  installing new kitchen cabinets and baseboard trim. Again, its sweat equity going into the end product and we're making our way through the cut list. The old kitchen island will be replaced with an island on casters that I can move when I need extra shooting space in the studio. It's really going to look good and work better for my needs. We plan to have everything completed in the next two weeks. I've started taking studio and sales appointments again while the final details are completed. I am planning a studio Open House for the end of April to formally present the new studio space to clients, friends and other local business owners. The Open House will be a fun evening of food, drink and mixing with others from the community. Stay tuned on Facebook, Twitter and the Tangerine blog for further details on the Open House.

And remember Pin Up Pets 2015 Calendar sessions to raise money for local pet rescue charities through the month of May. More information is available at www.TangerineHouseofDesign.com

Lisa Asp, M.Photog., CPP, is the owner & photographic artist at Tangerine House of Design. Tangerine specializes in portraiture of kids, families & pets.

Studio is located in Edina MN · www.TangerineHouseOfDesign.com