I left part one of does Every Woman Need a Shed right at the point of launching into our building work in the studio/ shed/ dumping ground.

HOW DO WE START?

Now I don’t know if I mentioned that the house is Grade II listed? That sounds charming and wonderfully historic but in fact it’s a pain in the .. as it meant the shed is also listed, meaning we had to seek permission to do anything to it. Now I know some people would have just gone ahead but we are law abiding people, and given we both work in arts conservation it feels like we should support the conservation of historic building too, as inconvenient as that may be.

I had a vison of what I wanted the studio to be like. I thought fabulous to have the front turned into a huge window and also have skylights installed to maximise the light. Really, I’d be happy in a glass box – just call me a hothouse plant or a transplanted pineapple…

Luckily for us the local conservation officer was able to come and see the building and was understanding and cautiously approving in theory. We agreed that previous repairs had been badly done, as it had patches of rough concrete render slapped around the walls, but the original sections had a lovely soft texture with splashes of paint and scratches and marks in the surface. Nothing creepy and horror / ghost movie-like, you understand, just showing the history of its use.

I’m a sucker for walls with textures and interesting layers as can be seen in some pictures below and in lots of my Instagram feed by clicking here.

paint splashes on orange wall abstract
detail Nepalese monastery wall painting

THE REALITY

Sadly it became clear there could not be a large window, mainly due to the building construction limitations. We also needed an architect, listed building consent and a builder experienced in clay lump buildings.

Already it was becoming apparent that this job would not quick or easy.

While all this was going on I was up to my ears trying to build a wardrobe onto the landing upstairs so we would finally be able to put our clothes away. That may seem simple, but the combination of trying to make it look like it was always there, but have an interesting modern twist, and the fact that literally not a single surface of the house has a straight line (I’m really not exaggerating – walls, ceiling and floor all squiffy in different ways, a spirit-level was useless) meant this became a herculean task that took every weekend for months.

Yes it was fun going to the reclaim yard for old oak lengths and designing it, but having to carve same oak so it would fit the wobbly walls was another matter. As was trying to find the joists in the ceiling to fix the timbers into, of course no two of them at regularly spaced intervals. Thank goodness for the magnet trick (footnote below on magnet trick for those who are interested).

You will see from the photos that it was a labour, but at the end so nice to put clothes away! That said, if I had to build it again I’d do pretty much everything differently. That is a lesson I should have learnt when it came time to start on the shed… but did I?

It was a good foretaste of the work to come; never straightforward, hair-tearingly frustrating, all-consuming and messy. Satisfying to complete. That however is jumping several busloads of guns if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor.

Does every woman need a shed part three soon…

 

front of black shed