Thanks to everybody who commented and left ideas about the studio floor.

We still have not purchased the flooring. In fact we haven’t accomplished a lot since the last update. There has been illness and holiday shopping and socializing. And even a little bit of gardening.

There has been one breakthrough on the studio however. After considerable puzzling over how to accomplish the task I have just about got some new electrical outlets in the wall.

The problem was how to run the wires down the wall with minimum damage to the existing wallboard. Usually the wires come down from the attic through a small hole in what is called the top plate. So it is necessary to drill a hole there and push the wire through. We have a very low roofline and I am not nearly so nimble as M S Stevens when it comes to crawling through tight spaces. Besides I had already determined that even if I could get to the space there was not enough room above the top plate for the drill.

Another solution would be to bust out the wall board and drill the hole from below. This would require a pretty good-sized hole and a lot of patching.

My solution was to make only a minimum hole at the very top of the wall, about six inches square, and then notch the top plate enough for the wires to pass through. For safety reasons I will cover the notch with a metal shield, so that the wiring will not accidently be punctured by a nail. That’s probably not going to happen since it’s so close to the top of the wall, but maybe somebody later will want to install a crown moulding.

I cut out the opening with a small handsaw and saved the cut-out piece so that I can fasten it back with adhesive. That way I don’t have to worry about matching the texture as I would if trying to patch it with a new piece of wall board.

After this we will install new lighting in the ceiling and then make one more change. Since this used to be the garage it is also where the attic access is located. In this case it is only a little trapdoor about 16 inches square. Not good. So we are going to install one of those pulldown stairway things.

After all that then it will be time to paint. And after that comes the floor.