For four or five months, now, I've been putting the shuck on Buffy for having dragooned me into quilting. I've been outed. In a comment to Buffy's posting on Red Hat Ladies Travel, I blithely made reference to the kiln room in our basement. Ever alert, Buffy picked up the reference and ran with it, asking that I clarify what we do with a kiln. This little yarn will not only answer her question, but reassure her that leading me astray isn't as hard as I had tried to make her think it was (but it was all the better to make you feel guilty, my pretty!)
Back in late 1998-early 1999, while Hunky Husband and I were in the last throws of designing our current home, my Elegant Friend (who had recently been widowed), made an eminently sensible suggestion. She and I had been/were taking classes in pottery and in cutting glass to form mosaics embedded into concrete stepping stones and bench tops. She suggested that I incorporate a "hobby room" in our new basement. The seed was planted in fertile soil and grew. Since I had planned to have two "activity rooms" in the basement to use as I wished, I chose to make the larger room into a sewing-multi-purpose room. The smaller room became the "hobby room".
The constraints for the room were the size (10' 8" x 16' 6"), location (north corner--house sits at 45-degree angle to cardinal directions), the fact that it housed the "escape window" for the basement, and that it housed the bottom half of the clothes chute. The room adjoins the laundry room on the longer wall (across from the escape window) and the bathroom on the shorter wall. Design juices flowing, I designed about 10 linear feet worth of built-in cabinets along the laundry room wall and put a pocket door next to the cabinets, leading to the laundry room. (A large, deep, stainless steel sink is just inside the laundry room from the pocket door, making cleanup after potting a snap.) On the shorter interior wall, a swinging door provides access to the main hallway and the bathroom.
Cabinetry houses the laundry chute and a small cabinet for art glass and glass supplies, beneath the chute. All of the cabinetry is oak, and it looks quite nice. Originally, the electrician started to install the electric power distribution panel behind the swinging door; but, I asked that it be installed on the exterior wall, between the escape window and the bathroom wall (these panels are framed and behind oak doors, too.) The kiln sits in that corner, providing a short run for the heavy electrical lines required to power it, and is vented to the outside using steel piping.
EF and I have a Skutt Automatic kiln (KS-1027, with 7-cubic-foot capacity and powered exhaust), a small electric potter's wheel, and an electric grinding wheel--for the glass work. We have cheap, open, metal shelves (moved over from our previous basement) for the greenware, glazed ware, and pottery supplies. There are, of course, 10 linear feet of work space with plastic laminate on the long cabinetry. Glass cutting supplies hang on magnetic bars between the two upper cabinets (think of a cabinet built around a sink with a window above it--but without the sink and window). After EF and I had used the room for several months or a year, I had the tile man come back to install tile beneath and at the sides (up about 30") of the escape window. (The potter's wheel sits "under" the window and it was difficult cleaning the slip off of the wall!)
For the first year after moving into this house, EF and I did quite a bit of pottery and glass work. Far from being expert at either one, we had great fun on one evening each week (I was still working!) Then, we started getting busy at other things. The last time we threw anything on the wheel was in early 2001, and we cut glass not much later. This spring, I glaze-fired some of the pieces that had been setting about since then. We still need to pour concrete to make a gutter downspout for which EF made a beautiful snake those few years ago. Perhaps, this fall, we'll get back into the groove of learning to pot and learning more on the glass work. We haven't given up, but we've taken one heck of a long breather!
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Pottery too, on top of all the other things you do. Makes me feel like a real under-achiever. I hope you have to opportunity to do some more pot throwing. It would be a pity not to use that wonderful space and equipment.
I wish we had room here for some sort of hobby room. Not for a kiln but because I have a knitting machine that I have no room to put up. Before I married I had room for it but since you-know-who came on the scene... Perhaps I should take over one of the Stepkids old rooms. Mind you, somehow although they have both left home (one in a rented home with friends, the other at university) they both seem to think of here as their base and to turn up demanding a bed occasionally. As a Stepmum I have to be careful not to be acting like a Cuckoo.
Posted by: Adele | June 30, 2005 at 03:52 PM
Come on over. We can share!
Posted by: Cop Car | June 30, 2005 at 05:30 PM
HA!!! You made me feel that I was the bad guy....luring you into the wonderful world of quilting, when EF and you have NO CONTROL! Soon you'll be reviving MACRAME! I can see the two of you opening a craft school one day! lol
Smart move, tiling that wall behind the kiln.
Our kiln was left behind when Elegante Mother returned to Illinois, so I no longer have that temptation.
Go throw a pot. Play with glaze. Enjoy the kiln, but remember....you're into quilting now, and your time for other things is limited! Muuuahahaha
Posted by: Buffy | July 03, 2005 at 12:44 PM
Cruel driver that you are, Buffy!!
I failed to say that I also had the tiling above/about the sink in the laundry room extended up to the bottom of the upper cabinets. Not thinking about cleanup from potting, I had originally had a single course of tile laid above the sink. Splish, splash!
Posted by: Cop Car | July 04, 2005 at 09:25 AM