Our first task was to paint the weaving shed site interior in preparation for construction of the Eva Berendes’ work. Painting white on white was quite a lengthy and laborious task but we made good progress and successfully completed a thorough coat by the end of our first day.
As the paint job was now complete we got to work on the floor grinding using high-powered sanders. We needed a clean, dust and paint free floor space to work on; a hard thing to achieve as the floor was covered in a thick layer of dust and grinding the stonework was resulting in huge clouds of the stuff. It was very slow backbreaking work requiring goggles and masks and I recall it being described at one point as a ‘post-apocalyptic’ scene.
The work was hard but when the grinding was complete and we had begun to clean the remaining dust I felt a great sense of achievement. The place was beginning to look somewhat complete. The weaving shed was an inspiring place to begin the project; it holds so much history and there was never a dull moment, there were always jobs to be done. And as an added bonus to counteract the cold weather we also had delicious home made soup courtesy of Tabitha!
