John Hendow

As we continue to remodel our house in a sort of room-by-room fashion, we’ve been going through an interesting process of reduction. In order to make space for the demolition and reconstruction, we clear the room of everything. Then we strip away the floor, walls, ceiling, and sometimes the walls! Then we begin to rebuild. Once the room is finished we begin to put items back into it, and we usually wind up getting rid  of about half of what was formerly inside that room. Every time we do this I’m amazed at how much stuff we don’t put back… these items get donated to charity, given away, or jettisoned to recycling / trash. The result is a much cleaner and more streamlined room.

The room currently undergoing remodeling is my tiny music room. We’re in the home stretch, with just finish work remaining. It’s going to be nice to have that space completed and ready for use. The big question for me is… will I get rid of some “excess stuff” (tough to use that word when talking about musical gear!) as part of the process? The answer is yes. I’m going to make a list of all that extra equipment and put it up on Craigs List / eBay. Let the winnowing process begin…

For the past few weekends we’ve been gutting and rebuilding the music room at home. This has been the most complete remodel we’ve done in any room in the house so far, and it’s been an interesting process. One annoying aspect of the music room was that the ceiling was so low; I could touch it standing flat footed… that’s a low ceiling! We removed the drywall from the walls and ceiling, which allowed us to completely reroute the plumbing and wiring, thus gaining over 2″ of headroom. Last weekend we finished installing the insulation, new lights, new window, ceiling drywall and about 1/2 of the walls. This weekend I’ll be able to get the last of the drywall hung and hopefully complete the custom-install of the built-in bookcase and desk. Then the taping and mudding, paint, floor, moulding, built-in cabinets, new door…

For such a small room, this has certainly been a big time consuming project. It’s a little difficult to build any momentum when we only get stuff done over the weekends, but we’re chipping away steadily at this one and should be finished by the end of April.