My Mum always said that many hands make light work (or something like that), turns out she was right. Yesterday was the Fairview Studios Semi Annual Scrub Down. 10-12 students showed up around 5:30 to scrub the floors until you could eat off them. OK, I wouldn’t eat off them, but they did get scrubbed, hosed and wet vac’d until you could see bare concrete.
On a side note: If you EVER want to build your own studio and decide to go the bare concrete floor route, I highly recommend sealing it. Concrete might be forgiving of spilled clay slop and other pottery studio messes, but it does not clean up well if it is not sealed. The previous tentant had used this space to park their vehicles in, so the floor was pretty well beyond sealing it when we moved in (residual oil drips, dirt, etc)
If you are a safety conscious person, this would probably make you cringe. We got the hose out and sprayed down the floor (after moving all the wheels and tables etc to one side), scrubbed with a deck brush and then sucked up the water with a shop vac. The cord for the vac did not reach far enough to get to all the nooks and crannies, so we plugged it into several long extension cords. The plug ends of said cords spent a lot of time in puddles of water. What’s wrong with a little full body electro shock treatment?
Since we did not manage to electrocute ourselves, we got out of the studio around 7:15. Most of us headed over to the Dog & Duck for a couple of pints and some food. This was to also be the wind up party for the Water Valley Celtic Music Festival that Dave has been putting on for the past 14 years. The music was good, the food was good and the Guinness was great. They even go to the effort of putting the shamrock on the head. Most places don’t as it is too much of a bother to pull a pint of G, much less decorate it.
