Earlier this summer I ordered a studio building from Klotter Farms and today was the big delivery day! When you live and work in a 220 year old house, space is sometimes an issue. Not that our house isn’t quite large, it’s over 3000 square feet of living space, plus an attic and a cellar, but we use every single bit of it. So coming up with a larger studio was somewhat challenging.
After considering all the alternatives, I decided to buy a custom-built outdoor structure from Klotter Farms in Ellington, CT. Since we already have three barns, outbuildings are a way of life for us. For any of you thinking “OMG, why doesn’t she just work in one of the barns?”, obviously you haven’t spent much quality time in an 18th century barn lately. 🙂
Because we wanted to place the new studio into the 10′ x 24′ footprint of a former chicken coop, I was limited to a 12′ x 20′ building (we were able to come out an extra 2′ to the front). This is an improvement over my current 8′ x 14-1/2′ workspace. It’s not going to solve all of my space problems, but it is going to help.
I’m going to move most of my textile related items into the new studio, including 13 of my 14 sewing machines. Then I plan to turn my current, smaller in-home studio, into an office (where sewing machine #14 will live – surely everyone needs an emergency sewing machine stashed in their office, right ??? 🙂 ). Eventually I would like to buy another building to use as a greenhouse/painting studio.
I have to say that watching the building being delivered was quite interesting! Today was not the ideal day to do anything outdoors. The forecast was for high winds, heavy rains and flooding. Think monsoon season and you won’t be far off. Warm, steamy, humid air and pretty much constant, heavy rain.
We were told to expect the building to arrive between 7 – 8 a.m. The cat did his part, by waking us up at 6:20. We didn’t exactly leap out of bed, but we were up and moving before 7:00. As it turned out, the trucks didn’t show up until almost 9:00, which gave us plenty of time to mop up the flood waters in the house!!! 
The massive amount of rain caused the ceiling in my front parlor to leak like a sieve and my laundry room to flood. I quickly ran out of dry towels and containers to catch all of the rain in. What a morning! Just as I was getting the worst of the water mopped up, I looked out the window to see my studio sitting out in the road in front of our house.
The next hurdle we encountered in our path was that the studio was loaded on the truck facing the wrong direction. So the delivery guys had to unload it right in the middle of a near by side street and then load it back on the truck from the other end. This went much smoother than you would expect. It turns out that getting buildings on and off of trucks is no big deal, if you know what you are doing.
It only took about four hours for two guys to move the studio into place, pop up the roof and nail it into place (they deliver it folded flat) and finish putting on the trim. It was amazing! It’s not exactly “instant studio”, because it did take Brian a couple of weeks of hard work to prep the site, and now that the building is here we have to finish the interior – it’s not really Where Women Create material yet :). However, we are ready to move on to the next phase of my studio adventure – the electrician!
Everybody keep your fingers crossed that we don’t wash away. We are supposed to get even more rain tonight, tomorrow and tomorrow night. I’m starting to feel like Mrs. Noah… has anybody seen my pair of unicorns?
Izannah Walker Journal 