Notes for survival

Here's how I managed the project. Well worn lists of things to do. Tasks to be tackled. I look at the above list and just laugh to see how much I expected myself to accomplish in a day. However, in thinking that I could, I managed to accomplish an awful lot. Once, the slips of paper with now cryptic numbers and diagrams held some vital meaning. Now, I couldn't tell you what they mean.

Adaptation

Through the holidays and into the new year, J brought a parade of various contractors through — for foundation, plumbing, roofing and electrical work. Helpful as that was for my planning, I only went with one of them. Meanwhile, I played with the garage plan, increasing the square footage, removing the storage area and adding my own storage extension off the back. Then I made some sketches with doors and fenestration, and finally the loft, supply and reading area.

As a child, the Etch-A-Sketch was my favorite toy and I spent hours upon hours drawing floor plans and elevations. I took a subscription to Architectural Digest when I was twelve. Considering how long I had been thinking of making a building, it's funny to look at the scraps that actually served as instructions for my first one.




The front (north) elevation:




















The west side elevation:




















The the rear (south) elevation:




























The west shed elevation:




















The east side elevation:





















A cross-section with a sketch of the sink and paper shelves:





















The interior wall and loft:




























The floor plan under the loft:





















Sitting in my studio now, I am amazed to look around and see what became of these scribbles, almost indecipherable notes and numbers, all wrinkled and smudged with dirt. I can only wonder how Louis Kahn felt in Dhaka.

The Proving Ground

During November and December, I played with the footprint, stacking pots and cinderblocks to help myself imagine the space and the site lines.

At the recommendation of my neighbor directly across the street, I hired her next door neighbor, an experienced New England carpenter, to replace the exterior window frames on my house.

He and his wife (we'll call them J and M) showed me the garage they built behind their house and it looked all right. We talked about having him build my studio and he generously offered to provide me with recycled 2 x 4s at a small fee to remove the nails.

Again, I was acquainted with only a smattering of people in the area, had never built anything and was working with a bare bones budget. I had to start somewhere and trust somebody, so I decided to hire them to build my studio. It seemed like a good idea and in many ways, it was.

Why not hire a general contractor?! I figured that I was going to be on site every day and it seemed like a relatively simple project - and really was. Why increase the expense? How to find a contractor I could trust? With my carpenter neighbor, at least I was dealing with a more or less known quantity.

The Plan

Exactly a month after I moved into the house, Katrina hit. In Nashville, we had some heavy rains, whereby I discovered one roof leak and the fortune of a superior and reasonable roofer. By late October, I'd heard that because of the pending rebuilding efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi, the cost of building supplies was about to skyrocket and much of the labor force around Nashville was either already working down south or on their way. It seemed I'd have to act immediately to build the studio at the rock-bottomest price. No matter that I had not nearly recovered from the move to a new city and state (let alone settled in), had no social or general support system developed, and NO IDEA what I was doing or getting myself into (which is just as well, really). In any case, I needed a place to work. It seemed simple enough; design something, buy stuff, hire some people and put the thing together. Right?

In a heart beat, I became an architect-, builder-, contractor- and construction worker-in-training. I took out a home-equity loan. Then I took a meeting with the manager of the building materials department at the Home Depot seven minutes down the road. He agreed to freeze all prices the day I brought in my materials list and give a ten percent discount across the board (which, in this town, basically knocks off the cost of taxation), if I would commit to buy most of my materials at their store. We shook hands.

I needed a materials list and researching garage plans for something relatively simple and easy to alter, I found a nice one at coolhouseplans.com