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February 27, 2005
New flat files!
by sven at 10:00 pm
Seems like every artist's studio has to have flat files. When we went on the Portland Open Studios tour in October, everyone had them... You know -- the immense but shallow drawers that you might keep maps in?
Gretchin has wanted a set of flat files forever. They're exactly what you need in order to store big flat pieces of art. But they cost maybe $300 - $600, depending on whether you're buying used or new. Eep!
So I decided to make them myself.
...But where to put them? My "ah-ha!" moment (Jan 18) was when I realized that we had the perfect niche in the studio, right under our noses -- if we moved out the washer/dryer!
I had hoped to get the flat files completed before our first Artist's Way class began, on Jan 24. Not much time at all, from when the inspiration had struck -- but I've worked miracles before. I dove in, headlong, and made a glorious creative mess...
No miracle this time. I hit a major snag in the wee hours of Jan 24. See, I had used these nice sturdy joints for the frame -- but their bolts stuck out a little too much on the inside. If I had kept that design, some shelves would have to be narrower than others. I had to clean everything up and put the project away, incomplete.
I finally got back to construction on Friday (Feb 25). One corner at a time, I replaced each one of the offending parts with two joints that would sit on the outside surface. Take a look in this picture at how the corners have changed:
Another interesting aspect of the design, that you can see here, is that the shelves are longer than the actual frame. The reason for this is that I had to be able to get the frame through doors and the hallway comfortably. The frame is 30" deep; the shelves are 40" deep. So, once the bulky frame is in its nook, the shelves can be tipped into place on their rails with ease.
Anyway, I just finished the flat files tonight and loaded them up with art and big sheets of paper. Here's the final product:
Bottom Line:
I'm happy!
Conception-to-completion, the project took almost exactly 40 hours of work time, including shopping runs to Home Depot and Ace Hardware. Cost of materials was $185, not including the first set of joints (which I hope to return) or some new tools that I got during the project.
I think it's a pretty good value. If you try to assign a monetary value to the time I put in, then maybe not -- but I had a lot of (exhausting) fun doing it, so I prefer not to factor that in. Besides which, most flat file systems only have 5 shelves; ours have 15 -- and you can remove shelves if you want more vertical space. ...And they fit perfectly into our nook!
I mean, how cool is that?
posted by sven | February 27, 2005 10:00 PM | categories: studio space