Inch by inch

Earlier this week I had an epiphany about the studio project: I realized that the reason I'd been having such a hard time getting started was because the design was wrong. Staring at my pallet of French doors, I'd been unable to envision how they were going to work with the roofline. Finally it occurred to me that what was bothering me was the symmetry of the doors as they would look set into the side of an asymmetrical building. It didn't feel balanced, because it isn't balanced.

So I've come full circle in my vision for what this building is going to "be," and am now back to seeing it as a simple, gable-roofed, four sided, symmetrical building more or less like the one pictured here. This kind of building will be much easier to build than the kind I had been thinking about, and it also will fit into the landscape better, I think, because the lines are so similar to the lines of the house. Click on the photo to see my notes at a more readable size.

Anyway! There really isn't any great rush to get this thing built, but then again, it would be nice to have it roofed before it starts raining again, which could happen any time now. Probably I have about a month before the weather really turns. Another thing I've decided, at Mr. A's suggestion, is to go ahead and buy some project plans and adapt them for my materials, rather than drawing my own. Although I have total confidence that I could come up with plans that would be almost exactly like the ones I'll buy (it's a very simple kind of building), it would be nice to see how a "professional" draws them. And they're not expensive to buy.

These folks have some basic plans that would probably be just fine. Plus, they have some nice step-by-step instructions, with photos, of a person putting together a building very much like the one I'm going to be building. Just going through their photos has reinforced my confidence that I already know how to do this – anyone can look at the inside of a similar structure and figure out exactly how it was built. Once you have it in your head, the actual process of construction is just a matter of lining up some brawn to help with heavy lifting, and taking it slow enough to avoid the most obvious mistakes.

This weekend we're going to another estate auction (I might get this chartreuse couch for the studio if it's funky enough, and if it goes for under a hundred bucks, which is entirely possible). The rest of the weekend I'll be spending getting things cleaned up for some house guests next weekend, and going to a seed saving workshop at the community garden, and labelling a few more flats of honey, and oh – tonight I'm going to the opening night gala for the Mariachi festival! At some point, though, I hope to also spend some time doing something tangible toward building my building. A nap would be great, too.