Got Graffiti?

We did – and we still do.

Our building flanks one of Bremerton’s downtown alleys and graffiti is part of the alley scene.  Last summer, when demolition was going on inside, some kids found their way from the alley into our building.  Armed with a couple cans of fluorescent orange spray paint, they left some colorful messages across a concrete wall where our new kitchen was going to end up.  We thought about leaving the messages exposed where they were but, well, they weren’t all that complimentary.  So, instead, we photographed the nicer parts and turned them over to our design team. 

Jeremy Southerland and Jennifer Paige got together with our firm’s graphic designer, Shao-Lin Cheng, and she produced an 18’ tall graphic for our kitchen, and one for the studio. Shao-Lin’s graphic blends the inherited graffiti with several photos of the building as we found it – which was pretty raw itself.  The graphic yields an appropriate “back alley” feeling and offers a reminder of a piece of the building’s life prior to our renovation.

Beams into Boards

Our design called for the removal of a portion of the upper floor, to visually connect the two main working areas of the office.  Yesterday, the big upper floor beams came out, opening an 18’ x 25’ hole.  Now, the light is pouring down into the forum area, as we expected it would, and it looks great.  The 3x15 floor beams, all vintage 1948 Douglas Fir, were hauled off to a home sawmill in Indianola and sawn into 1x15 boards. We’re going to bring the boards back and use them to clad a 35’ long “feature wall” that runs from our main entry to the middle of the office.  It’s a nice way to take some beautiful old wood and reuse it in a totally different way.  The feature wall will hold a 30’ long graphic timeline of our firm’s 24-year history.

Less than Two More Months

We gathered in our new space this past Thursday! Amid freshly sheet-rocked walls and a newly poured floor, the partners announced firm promotions. Seeing the space almost complete was exciting and helped us to imagine working in the building in less than two months.