Studio build - Part 4
With home working becoming the norm over the pandemic, this blog post series explores the highs and lows I went through when designing and building my own garden studio.
My first port of call for plastering was to my cousin, a plasterer of over 20 years but I knew he was booked up well in advance. After having this confirmed I moved on to sounding out other plasterers in the area.
With an average of an 8-week wait it felt like the studio would never be complete. I had visions of working in it by early Spring but running into a few setbacks on the way and now to be told the plastering couldn’t be done till September at the earliest left me deflated.
There was one job I could do while I waited…
But all was not lost. Out of the blue one evening I got a call from my cousin to say a job was cancelled and would I be in the next day to let him in so he could start! Yes! It was on. In total the plastering took two days to complete and a build up of around 6 layers of plaster!
I waited 3 or 4 days before giving the plaster a wet wash of white before I started building up the white paint. I’ve gotta say something about white paint, it’s the worst. I couldn’t see where I had gone and where needed painting next. A week or so later and it still needs touching up in places!
Finishing touches
The inside finally looked like a legitimate design studio - white walls, plenty of natural light flooding in, electric but no floor. I took to Google to work out the square footage of the floor area and calculate how much click flooring I would need.
Turns out my calculations were way off so I ended up having to travel to Wicks a couple of times when my first run of flooring ran out about half an hour after starting! Still, my enthusiasm couldn’t be dampened, I could see the end in sight.
Once the flooring was down I moved on to the smaller finishing touches – my dad made a nice window ledge for the fixed window on the side of the build whilst I made the most of the heatwave we were having and started varnishing the outside of it (a tedious job once you’re fifteen minutes in!). One of the final jobs left to do was to get a desk. I did look at Ikea desks and there were a lot to choose from but as my studio is a bespoke size for me, none of the desks would fit right, and after all of the effort to get to this stage I didn’t want to compromise on a desk, especially as I would be sat at it most days so I designed one. It needed to house my computer obviously but I have also started sign painting and I write and draw a lot too so it was important to me to have space away from the screen, so I designed it to be an L shape, with a slightly narrower depth on the side I would be writing and painting at. The final desk ended up being a floating desk with a central support – I’m very happy with how this bad boy turned out!
And that was it. After just over a year of on/off construction from a father and son team, my garden studio was complete and ready, well, almost ready to move in. I still had no internet out there. I did quite a bit of research into wifi extenders and outdoor waterproof routers but none of it sounded 100% secure. Knowing I’d be on Zoom calls and Google Hangouts regularly I needed a connection I could rely on. The only thing which could provide this was a 50ft Ethernet cable, which required me to dig up the garden (again) in order to bury it.
Lessons learned
This building project has taught me so much, from practical skills to problem solving. But most of it has taught me patience. Things will go wrong. Accept it, take a deep breath and think about how I can work out a solution. I’ve also learnt not to expect so much of myself all the time. When the weekend would come around I had about ten tasks I wanted to complete – when in reality only one or two, if I was lucky, would get done. That’s ok though. I was moving forward and I can see that now with the benefit of hindsight.
This long and at times stressful project has given me a new perspective, a new confidence in myself that I’m excited to take forward into future projects.
Acknowledgements
What can I say about my dad? He has not only afforded me his time, expertise and knowledge, but I’ve learnt more about him as a person which I wouldn’t have had the chance to I don’t think if it wasn’t for this build. Thank you dad!
Charlotte, thank you for being so understanding all through this process – you’ve been on childcare duty for far too many weekends in a row to mention and yes, I do owe you! When the garden was a mud bath filled with off cuts you never complained and in answer to what ultimately became your catchphrase throughout the build, ‘Is it finished yet?’, I’m pleased to say, yes. It is. Thank you for bearing with me on it. I love you.
Gary, thanks for the awesome job you did on the plastering and for shifting around a few jobs to make it work. You’re a legend.
Doug, thanks for helping when you were only round for a visit. Your height was much appreciated when I needed to refit those plasterboards to the ceiling!
If you’d like to take a look around the studio in person please get in touch with me – it’d be great to show you around! Or, if you have a design project you liked to discuss with me (not a studio build – Charlotte would kill me) I’d love to chat!
