PART 2 – BUILDING (you can read part 1 here)
Over the winter of 2014 and into 2015, we needed to clear the space. First thing to do was to get rid of The Tardis, a huge a spider-ridden shed that the previous house owners had left.
Kezia Gill and her husband came over for the day to dismantle it but ultimately decided not to take it, so it was given to a mate with a gardening business called Mr Marv.
The garden suddenly looked massive without the huge, domineering shed there. The concrete floor that was left worked brilliantly as a mini ice skating rink over the winter, and I thought, sod the studio, let’s build a swimming pool instead.
In early January, I w
ent over to Nottinghamshire to see progress on the studio building. The way they do it is to build the studio in a huge warehouse and then dismantle it and take to the customer.
The guys from Extra Rooms came over in mid-February. The initial skeleton of the build was super-quick; I left the house at 8:30am to take my daughter to school and came back at 9am to an almost complete shell of the building.
Over the next couple of weeks, I watched as the studio took shape. They built the outer walls first and then added the insulation and extra walls inwards. I remember walking into the room when the basic shell was there and remarking how huge it was. When the guy said it was going to be 12 inches smaller from every wall because of all the soundproofing, that’s when the worry set in.
And my word, did I worry. I worried about every single thing and must have driven the guys mad. The panic really set in the weekend before they were due to hand the keys over on the Monday. The structure was finished and all the walls built and windows and doors fitted. I went in on the Sunday, closed the doors and listened. My heart sank – I could hear birds tweeting from the neighbour’s house! I wrote a very panicked email to the head guy who assured me that it would be fine.
And indeed it was. Whatever it was that leaked sound on that Sunday didn’t leak on the Monday. They spent the rest of that week painting and fitting lights. On Friday, it was ready. And on Saturday, I had my first recording session! 
It was a race against time to get things in, in 24 hours.
Final instalment tomorrow!