It’s been an eventful summer so far. We spent much of July looking forward to and preparing for Grace’s first birthday party. We had guests coming in from out of town, we had the backyard to prepare, we had “Carmageddon” to worry about… and then there was the photobooth. More than two years ago, I’d decided to buy a vintage photochemical photobooth from a friend in Chicago. As he worked to refurbish it, and the months turned into years, Grace’s birthday seemed like a good deadline to try to have it installed by. Between the Fourth of July holiday and the vagaries of interstate “less-than-load” shipping, the booth finally arrived on Wednesday, before Grace’s party on Saturday.

Since the beginning of May, my friend Jeff had been coming over every weekend to help out as we walled in the space next to our shed to make a little room for the booth. We framed the walls, put in a door, added siding, did the electrical, hung drywall, and painted.

The space began like this:

And eventually became this:

And looks like this on the outside (though it will be painted at some point):

After I finished the painting, the next step was to make sure I could wheel the booth from the driveway to its new home, past a balky gate, over an uneven pathway and a huge lip at the base of the door. I rented a set of “Roll-Or-Kari” dollies and and “Dutchman’s Dolly” (a.k.a. a J-Bar).

You can read a full account of the move on Photobooth.net. Here are a few videos and photos from the day:

Thanks to Keith and Eric for coming over to lend a hand disassembling the high-quality pallet the booth came on, getting the booth off the pallet, and getting it onto the Roll-or-Karis. From there, it was a pretty straight shot through the gate and down the path into the shed.

I cleaned off all of the old price stickers, many layers of tape, stickers of hearts and cats, and some other gunk.

With help from Tim and Anthony over phone, text, and FaceTime, I managed to get the booth working a day before Grace’s party, and by the day of, it was running smoothly and provided tons of great pictures for our guests. We made a guest book for Grace’s birthday, and also started on a guest book for anyone who comes to the house and uses the booth in the future.

As you can see, I’m still having some issues with the timing of the strobes; most of the time they seem to work fine, but occasionally, one more more of them won’t fire, so you’ll get a shot that’s darker than the rest. But for a booth that hasn’t worked in awhile, set up by someone who’s never worked a machine like this before, the results are pretty good, I think. Now we just need lots of people to come over and take advantage of it. I still don’t have a sense of how long the chemicals will last before I have to change them out, or how long the paper will go before it goes bad, but there’s only one way to find out.

At this point, Grace is still a little freaked out by it, disoriented at first being in a strange, enclosed space, and then stunned by the very bright flashes that go off. The only way to get a smile at this point is by bouncing and singing and distracting, I’ve found. I’m sure she’ll get more used to it, and who knows, eventually she’ll probably go out to the shed, flip on the machine, and take some pictures by herself.