Happy birthday to us!!

Yes, you read that right, it's our birthday!
Today it's been exactly a year since the big move from Nansensgade to Schleppegrellsgade.
I would have liked to do a huge month-by-month post documenting the last year and all the progress we've made, but, as usual, i don't really have the time.

One year ago i would have laughed if anyone had told me that we still wouldn't be completely finished with working on the shop on our first birthday, but at that time none of us knew how many things could possibly go wrong.
And considering the amount of crap we've been through, i actually think the shops current condition (which is "almost done" and "totally awesome") is pretty impressive.
I don't even mind waiting a few more months with the opening party!

Like we have for the past year, we're still going to flea markets all the time, this is one of our latest finds

And this is what it looks like in our amazing new work room

 And just so ya'll have something pretty to look at, here's the worlds most giant armpit tattoo, by Eckel

Alright, i'm gonna go celebrate our big day by scrubbing some tubes...
Yay?

Thank yous

It's the last day of 2010 and we've had quite a year.
Anyone who knows us, or follows our blogs, knows that 2010 was the year that we moved to our new home in Schleppegrellsgade. And although the decision to move to this particular location looked like a terrible idea at first, it actually turned out to be a good one in the end.
We love our new home and couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
But that doesn't mean that it didn't nearly kill at times. It's been a rough path, getting to where we are now, and not just for us.
Without the help and support of our team of carpenters and painters, the shop simply wouldn't have happened. There was only so much we could do ourselves, so if they hadn't decided to go all-in with us, we wouldn't have made it, and the shop wouldn't be the magical place it is today; a place we actually look forward to going to every day.
They basically worked two jobs for months and got even less sleep during that period than we did, and trust me, that wasn't much. Some day oil paintings of their handsome faces will grace the walls of Conspiracy Inc. Or we'll write a nice song about them or something, but for now they just get a blog post dedicated to them.

Our friends and family have also been a huge support throughout the year. Whether they helped us paint our new walls, loaned us money when our most valuable equipment broke down, gave us crap to put in our empty new shop, or loaned us their car so we could go to a million flea markets, it would have been hard to get to where we are now without them.

I know this is turning into a lame blog version of the Queens new years speech, and that really wasn't where i was going with this, but i have to give one last thank you. To our clients.
In the beginning, around March when we first moved, there was no furniture for them to sit on, no real entrance, and in some rooms, no floor. In the winter time there was (or is) very little heating and some days they'd be lying almost naked in a freezing room for hours and hours, and afterwards they'd give us money.
They keep coming up with awesome ideas for the guys to tattoo, and rarely complain when they get something completely different from what they initially asked for. And sometimes they bring us cake too.
Thanks guys, i hope you know that we appreciate the crap out of you!

Last tattoo of 2010; Jon's death metal swallow

We hope you all have a super happy new year, wherever your are, and we hope to see you at the shop or around the globe in 2011!

Not this shit again...

Four weeks. We had out perfect, awesome, beloved kitchen back for four weeks, and now the ceiling is leaking again.
I don't know what kind of retard they got to "fix" the leak, but obviously he didn't do a very good job.
We got people on it already, and luckily it doesn't seem to be dripping constantly, but holy shit was it depressing getting back to work today.
Oh, and Allan had a no-show too.
And it's not even Monday!

Bye bye, perfect white ceiling, it was nice knowing you

I'll be back in a few days with a post that's less of a downer. Maybe i'll even post some tattoo pictures, who knows!?

Ha!

I did it, i conquered the storage rooms!

These were the last two rooms of the shop that still had "construction" written all over them, but now they're finally ready to be used for something other than storing tools, paint and yellow dust.
Maybe in the future this will be a screen printing room?
For now there's still a bunch of stuff in there that we have nowhere else to put, but it looks a hell of a lot better than before.*

It's taken me days, a lot longer than expected, but i finally sorted through everything, threw out a bunch of stuff, and organized and cleaned the rest

The Star Wars toys got their own corner

And the decks finally have a home too

The chandelier on the floor is going in the front room, by the way.
Pretty, right?

*There are no pictures of the second storage room, because *someone* hasn't put up any lights in there yet.
But i swear i cleaned that room too!

Solutions

Thursday was a weird day at the shop.
A good day, but very long and weird.
We had a bunch of clients and a bunch of people who dropped by, it was almost like a real tattoo shop, and i guess that the sudden rush of people was a bit overwhelming because we've been alone down here for so long.
But we did get stuff done; Allan did three tattoos on three friends, and i put up a bunch of shelves for our toy collection in the (current) storage room.
Now, you may think that it's a strange place to put all of our pretty toys, and in a way it is.
But somehow we accidentally built a grown up shop (it wasn't on purpose, i swear) and the toys just didn't fit in anywhere.
So i figured, the storage room won't be a storage room forever, so they got their own wall in there, and by some amazing coincidence, they all fit (but just barely!)
And i think putting them all in one place looks kinda cool too!

Our rather impressive collection of delicious junk

The rest of the room still looks like hell, but once all the painting work is finished, i'll clean this up in no time

Ps. We couldn't get good pictures of the tattoos, so you'll just have to trust me when i say they where nice!

Glorious revolution

So, it looks like we're finally getting to the fun part of opening a new shop (decorating, finishing touches) and now, of course, we have to leave it.
Typical.

Not that we don't wanna go to Japan, we always do, it's just that the timing is a little off this time.
Fun stuff aside, we have unfinished business with our previous landlords, autoclave repairs, bills bills bills...
Actually, you know what, maybe the timing is just right!
The shop will still be here in May and decorating will be just as fun in a month as it is now.

We are finally using the real entrance!

Last night we took apart the couch and assembled it again in it's new, permanent spot

Our fancy new GLORIOUS wallpaper... and a birdcage

Oh, it's gonna be so magical and we can't wait to show y'all, but wait we must.
Sigh.

Almost there...

The bear and the egg man

I wasn't really gonna blog here until i had some news on the never ending front room, but since it looks like it'll be a few more days (or weeks, who the fuck knows at this point?) i changed my mind.
So here are some tattoos, before people start to forget about those.

Mathilda is looking relieved and relaxed after a short, but painful, session

And what did she get? A bear, of course!
How cute is this guy!?

And here's what Allan did today, a new (but not quite finished) addition to Björn from Germany's sleeve

Oh, there was one little front room update that i almost forgot about: hidden treasures under the very old wallpaper!
Gotta love those.

Who you gonna call? The Egg man!*

*No, really, this is the phone number for the egg man, whoever he was... the four digits prove that this was written some time ago.

Sunday shoppings

Ah, sunday, a day to relax and do absolutely nothing.
Or, a day to go to a flea market and then work on your new shop perhaps?
Obviously, we did the latter today.

The flea market was right around the corner from the shop, and most of the antique shops there had stuff on sale.
And you know we likes our antiques (and our sales)!
We stayed there for hours and left with some pretty good stuff, we even got a sweet deal on some lamps we scoped out weeks ago.

It was a nice day in our new hood... or so we though.
See, after we left this shit happened.
Right wing football hooligans and fun neighborhood markets just don't mix, and i'm glad we got out in time.

The painters and electrician where at the shop for a while, and we got to do a little shopping with our girl Anne as well, but for the rest of the night it was just me, Allan and Lucifer at the shop.
We did a lot of framing and decorating, and listened to a lot of J-POP.
Good times.

The office is still very dusty and cold, but i'm slowly starting to decorate in there too.

Turn out that the Seth Woof print we got at last years London Convention looks amazing with the blue walls!

I painted this old coat rack, so it matches the woodwork in this area.
The walls in there are the worst, but at least it looks great!

We got a few of these old tables for cheap, they match the wallpaper that's going in the front room*

This chair even had a twin in red, but i bet they were both really expensive

I should have bought this one, shouldn't i?

*Yes, some day we will have that front room!

Shop dog's life

Silly dog, do not lean against a freshly painted door frame.
Later that day he walked on the newly painted black floor and left one perfect, black paw print on the wooden floor next to it.
It looked so cute we were almost tempted to leave it there.

What'll it be tomorrow, Lucifer, red maybe?

Besides painting we also found time to eat some sunday brunch at the café around the corner.
With the painters, that is.
The coffee was weak, but the eggs were good, so i'd recommend it if you go out for some proper coffee right after.
Don't bother ordering a double shot, we tried that too.

The café seemed dog friendly, another plus, or maybe they just didn't notice our bat-in-a-basket?

I can haz bacon?

Wet cement

Look who has a floor now!
Not a floor we can use, but hey, getting there.

Bye bye Pit of Death and Doom

Sorry for the mess neighbors, it'll be over soon

Got started on the "i can't believe it's not Polaroids" wall (or door) today

Tomorrow we get internet at the shop, and i for one am pretty stoked about that!

The great conspiracy

We have moved!
We are far from done, but we're here and so is all our stuff.
We have been spending so much time at the new location lately that i've been dreaming about painting panels, and i know for a fact that our professional painters feel the same way.
But once this place is done, it'll be amazing.
And no, there's still no floor in the front room, but there were people in the pit yesterday working on that, so someday soon we will have a front room too!

We spent all of saturday and sunday moving, and a bunch of our sweet friends and family came by the shop to help us.
Martin, Christel, Mille, Nikolaj, Helle, Topper, Anne, Laurits, Suzy, Corey; thanks, we couldn't have done it without you guys!
And a special thanks to Uglen and Jesper (our painters), to Wookie (our electrician) and to Morten and Jonathan (our carpenters and lifesavers) for all of their hard work, help and patience.

Now, under normal circumstances i'd be all over an event as monumental as this with my camera, documenting the crap out of the occasion, but this time there was no time.
Seriously, we were all way too busy to stop and take pictures of every little thing, but here are a few random shots i took when time allowed it.
I wish there were more people in these pictures!

The sketchy people who rented the shop before us left behind a sketchy dream-catcher, Allan is here seen finally evicting it's ass for good

Eckel painting one of the toilets (that's right, we have two now!)

Sunday morning we went to a flea-market, here's Eckel and Corey getting cozy with our new belongings

And me and Lucifer getting cozy in the front seat

Lucifer, finally allowed in the forbidden room of the old shop

Even though the shop was nowhere near done (still isn't) Allan had his first client monday at 12

Our new kitchen chairs (still missing a table though) in our new kitchen

It's even more red in person!

Allans work space monday night, it's all coming together

More pictures... i wanna say "coming soon" but it's probably more like "some day when we're done drilling and painting".

Ps. The official shop opening will be in May, we'll find a date real soon.

Pps. We have no phone until friday, so email us if you need to talk to us about urgent matters.
If it's not urgent, please wait a week or two to write, as i have no time to answer mails these days.

Last work day at Nansensgade

So, as the title suggests, Allan had his last work day at the old shop today, and i doubt that another tattoo will ever be made at that address.
At least i'm hoping that won't happen!
I've been packing most of the day and while it's a little weird to look at the bare walls and think "i painted that line" or take down a bunch of shelves i put up, i am not really feeling sentimental at all.
This has been a long time coming, particularly if you count the years we've been dreaming about moving, and we're so ready to start our new lives at the new shop.
Which is still not finished, but let's not get into that!

I wonder how we ever managed to fit this much crap into our tiny little shop?

Slowly getting there...

Bye bye

Moving day is this saturday, i hope it goes smoothly.

Ps, This is our 100th post on the shop blog, hurray for that!

"Hi, i'm here for my appointment with Uncle Aaaaaaaaaaaaa..." *Clonk*

We seem to me moving in the wrong direction here, people.
Just saying.

Pit of death

Oh hi there!

So, it's been a while, huh?
Sorry about that, some of us are a bit sick, and we're all a bit preoccupied these days.

Today me and Allan went by the new shop to see how everything is progressing.
It's... going... it's happening... stuff is being done, that's for sure.
But i still can't believe we have to move in a few weeks!

The floor that looked like this the last time i was there, is now... gone

Maybe we should keep it like this, or turn it into a moat or something?

Toilet is gone too, but at least they bought us a new one

Debris

Samples

I approve of this!

This is apparently a giraffe?

These creepy little things were lying around the shop... matches the dream-catcher left by the previous tenants, i guess

The painters started painting today (no, that's not as obvious as it sounds, there was lots of work for them to do before they could even start painting!) so hopefully things are gonna start looking good soon.
More updates next week!