Single mum looking for good wood…

Yeah not THAT kinda wood! 😉  I’m talking about the tree variety. Get your minds outta the gutter!

I thought I might share with you how this all came about, how I put down my telephonist headset and fancy pens and picked up a ‘stanley knife’ sharpened pencil and a saw!

Right from college I went straight into Administration/Accounts and it was boring, eugh so dull, but it was stable and really that’s what I needed.  I’m a creative type at heart so if I couldn’t use my creativity for my every day work I would have to take up a hobby.  A few years ago, well before it was a ‘thing’ I got into painting furniture. That satisfied my creative urges nicely.  Problem was, what was I supposed to do when all my furniture was painted?

Well, then I had a change around of rooms and re-decorated which naturally meant REPAINTING my furniture. Hmmm, this can’t carry on too much longer. I started painting projects and ‘selling’ them on, or doing furniture for friends. I even repaired a friends, sons guitar. He had snapped it clean in half and it was trashed. I managed to repair it nicely and gave it a flash paint job, matt black with some cool gold spray paint. It looked ace.

I pined to paint furniture more and more, I also made myself a bath tray, that was a hit with family and friends…so I made more.

Then I thought, sod this. I don’t want to sit at my desk all day answering roofers technical queries and processing roof window orders. I NEEDED to make and paint stuff! So I did it. I quit my job.

Oh fuck…

I got a small workshop, painted it and decorated it so that it was all girly and in keeping with my furniture…the bath trays I still did at home at the dining table, much to the kids amusement and probably sometimes, dismay.

The workshop felt like such an achievement, a big milestone but it was really not all it was cracked up to be. It was in a very old mill with ZERO footfall, which meant no passing trade, which meant no customers unless I got them online…and that’s hard, very hard!

THEN I HAD A BREAKTHROUGH.

I found a wonderful place called Hackspace. WOW. It was like a piece of heaven. In a nutshell its a creative working space. They have a photography darkroom, 3d printers, a pottery kiln and best of all…a woodworking studio. OMG it is amazing. This place is better than sex! It costs £20 a month, so my overheads very very low.

The furniture workshop had to go, I was never there, it was miserable, there was no one there to talk to and Hackspace was the complete opposite. I wanted to be there all the time!

And now I am! Seriously, I think the guys there might charging me rent to sleep there! There are so many tools that do so many different things and I am loving learning how to use them all. Here at 37 years old, is where I wish I had done carpentry at college instead of stupid admin.

I am just into my 4th month of self employment and am slowly starting to see some real potential. For a moment, a few weeks ago I thought to myself ”wow Michelle you really fucked up there, you need to go and get a real job!”. Then I read something online: new business, in fact business at any stage, isn’t supposed to be easy!

So I’ve been studying on how to gain some kind of a genuine following on social media, as its really not as easy as the likes of Kim Kardashian and the kids of The Only Way Is Essex would have you believe!  Hence, breaking out the blog!

The next blog, I think, will showcase some products and maybe even a video or two 🙂

M x