Back to Baker. . .

The Baker Install has been held up by one big, unfinished project. When we bid on this job, Rob threw in a custom-built, maple hardwood front-of-house-rack with a locking mixer-top lid and an attached locking rack accessory cupboard all custom stained to match the seats in the auditorium. No small feat. And no way around it. In fact, it needed to double in size in order to accommodate the lighting board that would also be installed in front-of-house position. Since we have a looming deadline to meet, Rob had to bite the bullet and get this thing built. It took large portions of three days, but he and Kurt finished it up on Tuesday night. LATE Tuesday night.

After hours and hours of sanding, puttying, sanding, staining, sanding, and staining. . . . the finished product was beautiful!:

Rob and Kurt loaded the truck with everything they would need to wrap up this install and headed for Baker on Wednesday afternoon. By the time I joined them on Thursday evening, they had accomplished a great deal but still had a lot to do. The front-of-house booth looked lovely in the auditorium and matched the seats perfectly:
In addition to the sound system, we also agreed to re-do the lighting in the auditorium and add more fixtures to their existing lights. On Wednesday, the guys met with two local electricians and installed the truss that Kurt had painted, prepped and engineered last week. It turned out really nice:

Once again, they were up in the attic and on Genie lifts in order to attach the truss to the auditorium ceiling. Fortunately, they found a trap door just above the truss position which made the job a little easier. They used uni-strut and long bolts to attach the truss in place:

Even though Rob and Kurt are very capable of wiring everything, this had to be done according to code which is why they had to bring in the electricians. The truss was completely wired up with Edison plugs so the lights could be plugged in without a bunch of extension cords running up the walls:

This is the view from upstairs looking down at the auditorium through the trap door:

Gloria has had a lot of fun helping with this install. She thought the trap door was pretty cool:

In fact, even though this install has taken forever, we've had some fun exploring all the nooks and crannies. . .

Plus, to Gloria, "all the world's a stage" anyway. . .

She just happens to spend her life playing on one stage after another . . .

Kurt had his work all laid out for him. The school's existing lighting system was a mess and he had the fun job of cleaning it all up:

All of the wires he is sorting through are attached to these 4 bars of lights over the stage (they raise up into the ceiling above the stage) as well as the spotlights over the mixer and the new lights installed on the truss.

He had to check and test and re-run just about every line in the place. When he was finished, every light and every cable had a number that corresponded in a logical way to the lighting board and the dimmer (power) rack.

Rob had the fun job of using the Genie lift to hang the lights off of the truss:

A great deal was accomplished by the end of the day but there was still so much to do. . .

We checked out of the hotel early Friday morning and Gloria swam while we ate our continental breakfast.

The water was chilly. . .

. . . but that didn't stop this fish from swimming. . .

Back to work. . .

There were lots of details to finish up on Friday including covering up the trap door. . .

. . . installing recording microphones on the truss. . .

. . . and hooking up the snake to the mixer:

I won't go into all the details but, basically, in order to plug in vocal and instrument microphones on the stage so that they can be sent to the mixer at front-of-house and projected through the speakers above the stage, an audio "snake" has to get from the stage to the mixer. When we bring our equipment to a concert, the snake just runs along the floor (or the grass or the dirt or over the canal or whatever. . . ) but in the case of a permanent install, the snake has to get to the mixer without leaving a trail of cables. This can be tricky in a room this big but it's possible. This audio snake has one end installed in the wall at the stage and the other end is attached to the mixer. The rest of it runs up the wall at the stage, through the attic and down the conduit attached to the wall by the mixer.

The cables travel through the conduit we attached to the floor on our last trip. . .

. . . and under the booth. . .

. . . and then up through the top of the booth and into the mixer:

Although this snake was purchased with all of the necessary ends on it, they all had to be cut off so the cable would fit through the conduit. It was a big job putting them back on in order to plug them in to the back of the mixer:

It took a lot longer than I expected it would but it was finally done!!

I was really, really hoping for some closure on this project before I headed back to Boise, but the guys still had several hours worth of work to do and it was getting late. While these pictures give a pretty good idea of the finished project, it's not the "cleaned-up-and-finished" picture that I wanted.

I took a video that just doesn't do the project justice, but it kind of puts it in perspective:

Even though it was late when I got home, I still took Laura up on her invitation for dinner and games at her house.

It was FUN. . .

Oh, and by the way, Kurt's clogging practice is really paying off:

Sorry, Kurt. . . You knew I'd catch it on video sooner or later. . . :)