Proposal: Parkspace Manchester

The Hackspace
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Proposal: Parkspace Manchester

tl;dr: plantspace + snackspace + relaxspace, in the front room.

I’d like to suggest using this space to make a nice relaxing indoor garden area, and combine the not-directly-making areas of the space nicely.

In future open days, we could use this as the main entrance, meaning people’s first impression of the space is that its a nice place to be :grin:

General Decor

Light and airy. White walls, very light blue ceiling. Astroturf carpet (?). Paint a river on the floor Slightly more lighting than other parts of the space, ideally LED panels in a daylight spectrum.

Plantspace

Turn the entire back wall into the plantspace area

  • automated grow lamps + watering system
  • wall-hung planters
  • a shallow table area along the entire wall, for potting and pottering
  • guttering along the back of the table to catch any water drips from above
  • trellis :smiley:

IIRC this wall already has water nearby, as it is the wall which we removed the urinal etc from before moving in

Park Benches

We set up seating and tables in the middle of the room using picnic tables or park benches. We can likely acquire these for free with a bit of hunting freecycle. Add power sockets to these tables for laptop / phone charging use. Try to keep a few end-tables accessible for wheelchair users

Snackspace / Kitchen Beach

Build out the snackspace area properly

  • kitchen worktop + appliances set up so people can use them
  • snackspace purchaseables moved into plastic boxes and shelved up nicely
  • a sink with drainage - this is one of the few bits of the space with easy water + drainage access!
  • wall-hung kitchen cupboards for snackspace, tea / coffee etc, mugs
  • hotglue on driftwood and shells because why not

When

Over a couple of weekends before the end of the year. First weekend could coincide with the 5th nov, when the space clearout is happening.

Weekend 1

Clear out all the shit. Clean all the walls and floor. Paint the ceiling, walls and bits of the floor that’ll be exposed (assuming we can get astroturf, whole floor if not)

Weekend 2

Set up snackspace worktop, hang wall cupboard and initial install of basic plantspace bits (trellis + bench). Collect and repair any park benches / picnic tables we’ve acquired, paint if needed, put in place.

Reusables

From the list of things due for destruction, we could probably use:

  • all the kitchen bits from the previous spaces
  • the f*cking driftwood
  • doors and timber for building out furniture - the doors might work for snackspace worktop
  • ikea square thing - wallmounted in snackspace

(this will need checking and updating properly, no idea if all of these are viable for reuse)

1 Like
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This has my full support.

It’s essentially what I had hoped this area would be, but better.

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Nicely done

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So far the walls in the snackspace should already be painted white, and the floor with that red paint we’ve been using

We were planning on shifting the stuff in that area then painting the rest of it (this was before the 5th of November was announced).

Once the stuff has been removed from that area am I still ok to do this?

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I’d hold off on painting the floor as fake turf would likely be laid down on top.

I’m on for refreshing the walls with white paint if they’re dirty or faded.

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It might be worth painting the floor anyway, to seal it under the fake turf (plus the fake turf is £££££ unless we can luck out on ebay!)

Is the floor paint you’ve been using available in green / blue? That would give us a good base to build on either way - happy to kick in some £ towards buying it :slight_smile:

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iam happy to move the plants we have into the lab and look look after them, untill its built.

real grass is simple but requires some work to make a shallow bed for it, given you get the right kind (could even do moss) and the benfit of plants in the space as they will filter the air and add liven it up a bit

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^ All This

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I’ll be dropping some new plants off in the next week or two - here’s a small taster

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Phase one - clean up some of the old plants and make a shelf for the current ones.

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Next steps:

  • Lighting
    • Going to get some daylight bulbs for this area that will be hard to accidentally (even
      even from good will) unplug. Will display sign about cost of electricity being comped by myself so that we can have this space.
  • Watering
    • Going to get a timer system put together for watering. It’s all so basic but should take pressure off us watering. Can then use the whiteboard to note any extra waters so we don’t kill them with kindness

Additionally I have a tallish cactus which I’d be willing to move to the space. Her name is Brenda.

The plantspace will feature part of parkspace. All of what I’m doing can be moved as and when needed. So this is just doing the bits we can early while we sort out the room of junk.

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I Agree with Bob in that even with fake turf you’d still need something to seal the floor in terms of dust.

This is the stuff we’ve been using so far

I think they do slate or blue, but we’ve been using red so far everywhere we’ve done the floor.

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Proposal to have this kind of setup in parkspace

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In the nicest way I think it should go the way of the screaming toilet . no

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What sort of power and lighting are we going to need ?

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A double socket high up for custom lights would be good please. I imagine 5A max would be needed.

I have a daylight batten installed above plantspace which can be moved over when the time comes.

Then some pinspots/RGB stuff for ambience might be added later on.

A couple of sockets lower down for people to plug laptops/phones in could be good too.

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We’ve made a start painting this room today, the two bays at the front and the plant wall are now mostly white, at least to the height I could reach :rofl:

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Next steps are to paint the tops of the walls and the roof, then to move the existing plantspace wall into there, and combine the two walls of plants and the watering system.

3 Likes
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I was in today to update the plant watering system and I have to say, Parkspace looks marvelous already.

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I’ve been thinking we would do well to have a proper place to store and wash kitchenware, such as basic crockery and cutlery which will be useful for people bringing in their own food, or getting takeaway delivered. Mugs for hot drinks, plates for sandwiches or toasties (we now have a toastie maker!), and some eating irons will be a great start.

At the moment the dishwasher is by the arts sink, and could do with being moved back to snackspace as it’s not very useful being around the corner and it hinders the drying space.

I have tried storing crockery next to the snacks inside the display case, but realistically a proper cutlery drawer and crockery cupboard will be way more intuitive, and it’ll keep everything together.

We could take this chance to upgrade what we have and put in a kitchenette in the alcove next to the snackspace fire doors.

  • It would drain into the next alcove along, which wouldn’t be hard to make with standard drainage pipe. We could separately investigate draining outside through the wall into the communal line that appears to run along the outside of the building. But that’s an aside - we have drainage available either way.
  • We have fresh water running overhead for a sink, and the dishwasher.
  • We need a counter top, a draw for cutlery, a shelf for the dishwasher, and an overhead cupboard for crockery.
  • Some cheap generic kitchen units would get us started nicely. It’s all modular so we can build to our current requirements and expand it as needed.
  • We can label the doors so it’s clear what goes inside, and also what doesn’t go inside.

So what’s the general feeling for this? I’m not against reconfiguring things, but the current setup with a kitchenette in the alcove seems the most pragmatic to me but I’m open to ideas.

I was initially going to use generic kitchen frames from Wickes unless we can get something in a bit cheaper! Any thoughts?

1 Like