Thursday, July 12, 2012

Darkroom/Kitty bathroom

For fifteen years and in 4 different cities I either had access to or had my own darkroom. In my scuffling days, I thought that a home darkroom would always be a major component of any structure I called home. . I strayed from that notion after moving to Salem and finding out about Udevelop, a darkroom rental facility in Portland. I liked the convenience and the camaraderie and for a couple of years spent a lot of time there.
When I purchased this house, I was impressed that it had a darkroom, but never entertained keeping it there as it was the wrong use of that space, so I continued using Udevelop.
That tailed off once married, with a more intense call schedule, and more time spent in home improvements and other stuff. Then came the digital age. As mentioned in the "Upstairs" entry, eventually I was very happy with my digital printing results, especially in color. B&W is another story. There is something about a analog B&W print that I don't find in digital prints.
So in 2009, we decided we did not need a 4th bathroom and converted that to a darkroom. As we had 2 cats, it as also a good location for the litter boxes.
I was happy to be able to repurpose the birch wood from the kitchen island countertop to serve as the countertop for the darkroom.
When the space was to be used a a darkroom, the litter boxes could be place elsewhere. As I was getting ready to bring my enlarger out of storage, we had a particularly bad storm which caused a leak on that ceiling. That, together with several other problematic areas of our roof led to this summer's project- a new roof in the one-story portion of the house and raising the ceiling height in the living room.
Except for the living room (next topic),laundry room, the carport and my workshop, that brings the survey of what was done to the house up to the present.

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