DIY Studio Renovation
Published June 22, 2021 · 6:01 · 156,085 views
About This Video
Van's 118-square-foot Topanga studio has skylights he can only shade by climbing onto the roof in motorcycle jackets and setting up a ladder. The fix: two waxed cotton tarps on a string-and-pulley system, controlled from inside the studio. Pull east-side strings to close, west-side strings to open.
No ladders, no motorcycle jackets, no cardboard shades. Six minutes of engineering a sliding tarp system against friction, gravity, and a very grippy roof. Correcting a design flaw with rope and stubbornness.
Transcript
okay okay so this is just the no no no this is ah i'm gonna it's gonna tear the grommets out so you go around i'm gonna go up there and see what's going wrong and you can fill me up from up top okay so the idea is you pull these sometimes we like the light sometimes we need shade the current method get the motorcycle jackets set up the ladder climb the roof cover the skylight descend the ladder then reverse that one solution is cardboard shades closed from the inside but then you gotta store the cardboard shade somewhere or make a precise little track for them to slide open and close also you gotta climb up on a chair or make some kind of pulley system that will never work all the time in the end probably tougher to make and less elegant than the sliding tarp system two waxed cotton tarps on strings to close the shades pull the strings hanging from the east side of the studio roof to open the shades pull the strings hanging from the west side of the studio roof no ladders no motorcycle jackets no cardboard it's too much friction okay so this is the pull to open let me just see if this one yeah see this one's it's gonna work so i'm gonna figure out some kind of strategy to get it like user friendly i think it's the friction of dragging this over the very grippy roof and then this over the very grippy roof although this reduces pretty quickly as it comes up the dome and then it could be that the way i've routed the cords through here coupled with the way that the cord goes over the roof here acts as sort of a brake so i'm gonna come up with some kind of solution that addresses the lack of slide on the apex of the roof the lack of slide down there and then the friction of the rope sliding through the guides and over the edge of the roof i have some ideas