Today’s entry is about a set wall. Peter Gick is a master set builder and the creator of the set wall which I’m blogging about today. His name is synonymous with creative perfection.
A few years ago I had this wall commissioned for a Lincoln job that I was shooting. It was a portable wall 16 ft long and 10 ft high. It was a rush job. We needed the wall in 3 days. Modern, dark woods, horizontal lines. Peter took those simple directions and created a master piece. After the job I couldn’t part with the wall. It was too beautiful to just toss away. So I stored it for a future project.
Little did I know that future project would involve a container. So with a 20ft stake bed truck me, my nephew and brother hefted the wall onto the truck and hauled it to my home/container location.
I estimated it would take a couple hours to unload it from the truck, remove some support boards and screw it onto my studded container wall. Of course there were a few other details to deal with. Like the fact that the wall breaks down into two pieces for portability. After all it’s a set wall not a permanent fixture. And then there’s the fact that it’s 2 ft taller than my container. Break out the saw! And so on.
Well a couple hours after dragging the lower piece of wall off the truck it was obvious that this was going to be much more of a challenge than anticipated. This was going to be MAJOR!!! The photos will fill in the details of what would ensue. My guess is that we logged about 14 hours of install time on that wall.
While a set piece looks like perfection on the outside it’s chalked full of temporary solutions on the inside. Non of which consider being converted for later use. So the hundred pounds of drywall screws, glued 1×4 and so on made for a huge challenge in preserving the beautiful facade.
It was well worth the effort in the end though. The set wall has been re-purposed, saved from a land fill and looks amazing in my container. This one’s for you Peter!
- My sister and nephew prepping for insulation stapling.
- The fiberglass insulation explodes from its plastic wrapper.
- The wall are insulated with R13 fiberglass insulation while the ceiling gets foiled bubble wrap.
- Stapling the insulation to the studs. R13 insulation value for the walls.
- Off loading the wall from the stake bed truck.
- Lifting the lower half of the wall into the container.
- Glued and screwed only a sledge hammer was good enough to modify the wall.
- Sweeping the debris field created from tearing the old support wood off the backside of the wall.
- There was an infinite number of drywall screws to grind off on the backside of the wall.
- Cutting the upper half of the wall down to fit the container height.
- Break time. The upper part of the wall is lying on the ground waiting to be prepped.
- Taking the cut upper portion of wall out of the truck bed.
- My mom steps in to direct the upper portion of wall installation.
- Ian the inspector fresh out of the bath tub arrives for his daily inspection.
- A closer look at the wall temporarily set into position.
Tags: alternative, construction, container, green, office, portable, recycle, set, wall















June 11, 2010 at 11:28 am |
Waaaaay Coooool M! You and Peter did a great job – looks like a portable dream office! Love the window additions too.