After almost two weeks of rain delay, my roof happened from Wednesday to Friday, my moving day. They were pretty great, despite that I had to meet them every morning to give them access to the house so they’d have power, which forced me to wake up early every day – not my favorite thing. But they worked fast, did a really great job, and cleaned up after themselves so that I didn’t have nails or bits of roof all over the place. The big project was the skylight, which took a bit longer than a day – cutting the hole in the roof, building the shaft for it, roofing around it, and framing it out so it looks nice from the inside. It is amazing how much more light my studio now has – my house is really very shaded by trees, which is great, but makes for a general dimness of the indoors. The studio is now the brightest room in the house, which makes me want to be in there a lot more – unfortunately, I’m still getting quotes on the sliding door to the backyard, and there’s no point in setting up that room if it’ll soon be covered in brick dust.

I did have to paint the inside of the skylight, which is way higher than my ceilings – the ceilings are a standard 8 feet, but the highest point of the skylight is more like 12 feet, so figuring out how to get a ladder that’d fit under the ceiling but get me high up enough to actually paint the whole area was a bit of challenge. Luckily, my dad has an old wooden ladder that’s almost exactly 8 feet tall, so we brought it in and set it up very carefully. The inside of a skylight chase is a fun thing to paint – it’s just 2 feet wide, so only slightly wider than my shoulders, by about 3.75 feet the other direction, and then 4 feet tall. Every time I’d turn to paint a new side, I’d brush one of the already-painted sections with my elbow, or shoulder, or hair – there is at least one piece of hair embedded in the paint for all eternity, because I didn’t see it ’til the paint had dried over it. Anyway, here’s how it looks, and the view through it as well.