While waiting on the new windows to replace the pseudo-windows the Previous Owners jammed into place because they were either too cheap to have the job down properly or were just stupid and let their contractor run amok, our contractor got busy filling holes…oh…so many holes.
According to records, in 1999 the Previous Owners took what was a simple open pool cabana and plopped down the Studio building in its place. The building is a hot mess consisting of three different spaces:
-The upstairs loft area, consisting of a giant closet that contains a second walk-in closet; I’m not kidding when I say the first closet is bigger than most San Francisco kitchens. The POs used it for extra clothing storage and, according to a friend of mine who worked in law enforcement, the closet-within-the-closet is apparently a simple panic room. I’m thinking of converting it into a second sound booth. As for the rest of the loft space, the POs had a couple of armchairs and their rather scanty selection of reading materials there.
-Directly below the loft space, a small downstairs room which can be entered via the French doors near the pool equipment. (Last year we had the door frame rebuilt to prevent it rotting out.) The room has a giant closet across one wall and a door into the little wine room. This space was used by the POs for a two-seat couch across from TV #10, used solely for video games (remember they had 12 TVs scattered about the house). In the third pic below, you can just make out the built-in speakers and dangling wires on the brown wall to the left of the doorway/giant spiral staircase; that is where TV #10 once lived. When we moved in, all that remained was a large bracket where the TV once hung.
Fifth pic is a shot of all the patching that was done to remove the conduit holes and speakers. That teeny little room had so many holes to clean up–speakers in the wall, conduit holes for wiring. There were actually speakers mounted in the ceiling near the closet doors (seen post-patching in the last image below).
1. That built-in speaker motif carried through to the four speakers in the main room. The original real estate listing shows the space as the POs had set it up. The large black cabinet in the right corner housed a stereo and TV #11, so all the speakers were wired to that corner of the room.
2. When they moved out, we were left with a snakey pile of wires. Here’s a shot post-flood/pre-renovations of the mass.
3. Originally we thought about keeping the speakers and running wiring to a better part of the space, but then a WTF thunderbolt hit us and we just wanted the speakers gone. Considering the POs’ propensity for using underpowered amps to drive speakers at high volume, causing them to blow out, we were not at all surprised when our contractor removed the speakers from the walls and we learned that they were just inexpensive units from Auvio and Radio Shack.
4. Finally after all the holes were patched, our contractor sealed up the giant hole where the silly door once was. He later textured that space and all the patches, so when we were finally ready to paint the space, everything blended almost seamlessly.
Then we continued to wait….and wait…for the new windows to arrive.