Six Years In The Making

In the spring of 2006, Molly and I decided to move into our Studio space, in the basement of the Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove.  For those interested, back then it looked like this.  At that time, the building's owner told us he was planning to replace the bank of windows in our space, which then faced into a courtyard space contained by the schools's mid--20th century annex.  A lot of stuff happened since then (the annex was torn down a few years ago), but our windows remained unchanged.  However, people had been coming around in recent weeks to measure things and we were told it was going to happen.  Other basement windows were replaced yesterday, so we knew it was coming soon.  When I arrived today in the late morning, I found all four windows (two opaque windows, two boarded up spaces) were gone.  Revealed was a whole lot of light, as well as the core construction of the exterior wall.  I relocated some work materials to the cafeteria, but checked progress once in a while.  By early afternoon the new windows were in place and some insulation and caulking filling some of the gaps.  Below is how things looked by the end of the afternoon.

Still more work to go with the process, as a different contractor will be involved in filling up the spaces lining the window opening, and creating sills.  And some shades/blinds will be very helpful for some of what we do there, but for now we have a whole lot more light than the room has seen in a long time.