Well almost a week went by without myself or Tammy going to the studio, illness and sheer workload prevented either of us going down, but hopefully we are back in track now. A week ago saturday, I met Phil, our electrician, http://www.ampedupelectrical.com/ (website is under construction so please be patient, Phil is concentrating more on his electrical work at the moment and will finish updating it when he has 5 minutes !), and whilst he busied himself taking the awful striplights down and replacing them, and moving the odd socket I started on the back wall.

"Phil hard at it !, not one cup of tea in site, I like this guy ;)"

The main framework went up ok, used the lighting stands to balance the top cross beam while I put the uprights in lol, be nice when I get to use them for photography again !

Once all the uprights were put in, the structure felt very sturdy, the trick is to cut the uprights slightly too long, by a few mm, and hammer them into place, nice tight fit equals no movement. Still got the cross members to put in, but will do that as I fit the plasterboard sheets. That was it for this saturday and as it turned out, for the week .....

Then carried on and made the side of the set on my next visit, now you can see the set taking shape, its going to be a corner studio, so we need to make an infinity curve now that goes all the way round......

We decided that we wanted the whole office at the back for editing and mount making etc, so the idea of removing the podium was to build a viewing / changing room in its place.....

So whilst Phil finished off what I had asked him to do for now, I started building our new changing and viewing room. As you can see the lighting circuit is off and we are working with worklights.

This is the room almost built, has a doorway and a window ! :)

This is the view of the studio from the window in the changing room, so any family or models etc can see whats going on without getting in the way of the set and photographer. Pretty cool huh ? We may also sell Hotdogs and Burgers from here LOL.

Well thats pretty much where it is at the moment, thanks to Jamie for cutting us some vinyl lettering for our mailbox, as well as hiring Phil if you need an electrician, Jamie is also useful to know if you need any vinyl graphics doing, or livery for your work van or even just a temporary England vinyl for the world cup ! :) These two guys are amazing and you wont go far wrong with them !

Other than the build, we have also been getting further on with the boring side, registrations, paperwork, basically signing our lives away many times lol, we now have a website address although the website wont be built properly until the Studio is finished, but you can view a temporary page here, and please do use the email and check it works ok ! :)

http://www.thelondonroadstudio.co.uk/

Yesterday we went and cleared alot from the office, cut up lots of wood to dispose of, and poor Tammy had the unenviable job of going to the tip with it. I did load the car for her ! ;)

Lots more to do still, but its definately heading in the right direction :).

Check back soon and see what else we've done ! :)

The London Road Studio Ltd

Hey guys, sorry for the delay in an update, things have been flat out for all of those involved, we have managed to make a little progress, but not as much as we'd have liked. Lots of background stuff being done on the legal/business side of things too.

To start with, we are now an official limited business !!! :)

You can call us The London Road Studio Ltd, from now on, Tammy and I have officially joined forces. We started a limited company to protect us both, and to make things easier to share/split. Lots of other stuff going on too, but you dont want to hear all that, you just want to know whats happening with the renovations dont ya ! :)

Well we did indeed get the wall down, that was actually easier than I thought it would be, took just 2 sessions, bearing in mind i do another 2 jobs at the moment and Tammy doesnt have time to breathe most the time, so we are doing well. Tammys husband Peter has been helping at weekends too.

So the wall....

The space really opened out when that wall came down, and the carpet was up, we have since spent time fillering the walls as the previous business sold tiny bits of plaster taken from the walls I think, there were so many holes !!! Its starting to look alot straighter now, last few goes with the filler and sanding and I think the walls are near enough ready for painting.

Can you spot the difference on the last 2 pics ? We've had an electrician come in and cast an eye over the very dubious looking electrics, he is also getting rid of the horrible strip lighting thats up, and replacing with bulb holders, we needed to remove the strip lights in the middle of the room to make way for the lighting track that will be going up, and I wanted normal light fittings so we can use daylight bulbs as the ambient light in the studio so as not to create any kind of cast on the set when its built. The electrician, Phil, is coming back this weekend to finish off the lights, he will also be moving sockets around for us.

Which brings me to the podium, both Tammy and I liked what we refer to as Peter's Podium, (he REALLY liked it), but have had to concede that it needs to be pulled down to make way for a changing/make-up room, so very soon it will be coming down and walls will be replacing it to make a small room, probably with a slit window looking out onto the studio set.

Thats about as far as we have gotten this week, major changes to the shape of the place should have taken place by next week, hopefully building partition stud walls this weekend early next week, then will be covering with plasterboard (or sheetrock as our american friend Tammy calls it ;)), then we can start on the set, which is going to be a corner set, so if anyone knows how to make a corner infinity (cyc) curve, at the moment we are a little stuck on how to do it, even after extensive searches on the net ! Would be cool if someone knows someone that can make the corner curve up for us from fibreglass or plastic then we can build the infinity curves on the straight edges to match. Be worth it when done.

The following diagram is a scale model made with Googles Sketchup of the studio cleared and ready for its new walls, when I get 5 minutes will add where the walls will be going now that we def know what we are doing.

Will try and get this updated a bit quicker next time, but we really are going flat out to get this and all the business side of it sorted as well as doing our normal jobs and lives, so may be a delay again ! :) Come back soon !

Heads up !

Wall coming down tomorrow ! (thursday) :) Pics to follow.

What have we done !!!!

Indeed, what have we done ! :)

Well as with most things that happen to me, this happened very quickly, one week I have no real intentions of getting a studio, the next week I have one, well that is to say WE have one, I have rented a building to turn into a studio with Tammy, Tammy is a photographer and friend that lives nearby and has the same aspirations to better her photography and offer more services in her photography business. My partner Jen managed to find this one after a short search, in fact hardly any search, this was the first one that came up ! Thats how things seem to happen for me, I kind of get pushed in a direction by the powers that be, when its the right time, it usually happens easily, this is one of those times, so I can only assume that this is the way I am meant to be going, and as such I'm hoping that success is going to come just as easily, we will see !.

The building is very useful, its near Gloucester City Centre, 5 minute walk, is the complete ground floor of a 2 storey building, the upper floor is a flat which is occupied. Security is good on the place, iron gates, security lights, and LOTS of locks. As you can see from the pic below, it used to be Barrys Disco Centre. The building is up the drive you can see on the right. The signs will soon be replaced with ours ! :).

When we took the place on, only a matter of days ago, it had a main room, which incorporated a welcome podium, a toilet, and another toilet room behind the podium.

You enter the building from a smaller front door, but the side of the building has a larger sliding door which will be useful for getting large products in that may need to be photographed, even a small car would go in i think, so def motorbikes and such.

From the main room you went to through to a storage room, this room was wall to wall shelving up to the roof with a walk way in between.

Then you went through to another room which would/could be used as an office / print room.

This used to be Barrys Disco Centre, as a result the place is FULL of power sockets lol, as you can see from the office pics, actually I think this room was used to repair electrical equipment, so that would explain the power sockets in there.

The guy that we are renting the building is great, the rent is pretty cheap for what we are getting, and he doesnt mind what we do to the inside, basically said gut it if we want to, which isnt far from what we intend to do lol. He's actually a dream landlord as long as we pay him his rent each month, so that is a big bonus. Very easy going. One nice touch, when we agreed to rent the building, he said he would give us a months grace to have a real good go at getting it how we want it before having to pay for it, which I thought was really nice, he didnt need to do that.

So anyway, yesterday Tammy and her husband Peter went in and started taking the shelving boards down, leaving the metal framework, there were so many shelves ! Peter also fitted a new lock to the small front door as the one that was on it was broken. So the place is lock tight now ! Today, I went down, took Barney, my dog to see what all the fuss was about lol, Tammy met me down there and we managed to clear the storage room completely....

Oh we realised the place didnt have a letterbox as the small front door entrance is in a passageway that goes up to the flat above, so have fitted a outdoor postbox by the sliding door to make things easier, needed to get it done as expecting forms to apply for business rates and they are being sent to the business address.

And here are the proud new partners of a joint photography studio !

How colourful is our studio !? LOL ok this is photoshopped obviously ;)