20 Sep I built it, now I’m moving in.
I built this website and now it’s time for me to go back in the studio. I built that too, but truth be told, I moved into it three years ago. And since I’m in the mood for truth telling, I just installed stairs in February. Until then I climbed in the door from a stump. I did that because, um, it made it feel more like a treehouse. More about treehouses later.
The ladder up the tree you see in the slideshow was not my entrance, but rather the means by which I put up the front wall. The wall was built flat on the floor and then sheathed with plywood. At 8×20′, framed with 2×6’s and sheathed with plywood, it weighed a bit more than I could lift by myself. So I attached a come-along (a hand cranked rope winch) to the wall and climbed the tree with it. A few cranks later I had a standing wall.
I built the whole studio by myself and count it among my proudest accomplishments. I have to give my neighbor Jonathan credit for helping me carry up the big front window though. Everything had to come up a steep slope from the driveway and be carried across the hill (including about 8000 lbs of concrete), and I dropped my end of the window as I lifted the unwieldy weight above my head. Luckily the window frame hit the stump instead of the glass and the window survived.
I tend to be a bit fanatical about my projects. It’s rather an all or nothing process. For the last two weeks it has been this website. Before that, the treehouse (more later–I promise), and before that I spent my whole life writing my book. So it seems. As a result, I haven’t had much creative time in the studio. Now that is my new project though. Stick with me and see what comes out of it!
