A Studio Is Born...I Hope!!!

Yes I know, I’m a naughty girl and it’s been ages since my last blog – but before you throw your arms up in despair at my blogging-inconsistency, please wait and let me explain where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to!  And how it’s now a race against time to make sure I have somewhere to hold my September craft classes for all of you lovely people who are signing up for them, (for more details click here).

You see it all started with a kind and long-suffering husband who, (after years of putting up with my fibre and art materials creeping into every inch of the house), finally agreed to my having a studio built in our back garden. Amazing news indeed, but then he went one step further by deciding that he would help me to design it and then custom build it himself. No really, and if you knew him, you’d be more than a little surprised too!

So at the end of April we set about demolishing an old double garage that was literally falling down and cleared the site to make way for the delivery of a new, timber-framed structure. It arrived promptly on 1^st May as arranged and we set about the build . Now at this point I should point out that my husband is not a builder or joiner by profession and I was slightly concerned that we might have bitten off more than we could chew with this major undertaking! Still he was silently confident in his DIY skills, and as we always worked well together, I knew that we could probably tackle most problems that the project could throw our way - heck he even stepped in to deliver our daughter at home when the midwife got stuck in traffic, but that’s another story for another day.  So, plenty of time we thought to be finished for the launch of our Autumn 2017 programme, so that you could all come and enjoy our new space with us.  Hmmm!

The first ‘building issue’ arrived within minutes when we had to carry the hundreds of heavy pieces of timber from our driveway to the site at the back of the house. Luckily our three munchkins were up for a challenge and pitched in to help us relay the wooden pieces up the drive in no time at all.

The second issue was when we quickly realised that we had mis-calculated and the solid concrete base was about a foot short! My hubby then casually suggested that I do some brick-wok to extend it. I have never laid any bricks before and was horrified at the thought before he jovially reminded me that I had made hundreds of cakes in the past and  ‘surely laying cement was just like icing a cake when cake decorating!’ Well I was not convinced about that but somehow I managed it and was actually rather pleased with my first attempts at bricklaying! 

In the end it took us a full weekend to erect the building and another three evenings (after a full day at work in our respective offices) to complete and tile the roof. So that’s the external structure all sorted. But that was just the half of it.  

I’ll post another blog next week to let you know how it finished, but safe to say there are only 10 days left in August, and one of those is our 20th wedding anniversary.  So just the two momentus milestones to achieve next week - hopefully I’ll reach both of them - wish me luck!!!!