Build Diary 17

I’ve been into pottery on and off for a few years now but it was never anything serious. Since moving to Bali however, I’ve been taking some more classes and discovered a real passion for it - so much so that I’ve decided that I’d like to have my very own little space where I can “potter around” whenever I feel like it. A creative space to spend time in on a rainy Sunday morning or whenever I feel inspired to create.

Before: This part of our garage will be transformed into my very own pottery studio.

The first step was to clear the area of the garage where my new Pottery Studio will be. We still had a lot of building materials left over from our house build, mainly long pieces of timber that had been occupying the floor. The second step was to put in a small partition wall to create a more defined space and separate my area of the garage from Sean’s workshop. After putting in the new partition wall, we lined all the walls with a good quality plywood and Sean made me a workbench from the timber we still had laying around.

Because the garage was always just going to be a normal garage, there was only one single bank of windows in the new Studio space. This would have been fine in terms of enough lighting, however with the new partition wall, I wasn’t getting enough of a breeze during the day. So we decided to cut 4 vertical windows into the Southern side of the garage wall to create a lighter, breezier space and to also take advantage of the beautiful rice terrace next to our house.

Of course I wasn’t going to wait furnishing my Studio until the windows were installed. To create a homey, comfortable feeling in my new space, I bought a pendant lamp and woven stool made from natural materials, as well as some natural wall decorations and baskets.

Putting in the windows needed to be done in just a single day, just in case of rain. So on a beautiful, sunny day we started early and removed the two sheets of the outer garage walls where the windows would go. We then cut the 4 openings and put the sheets back on. The next step was to put the timber windows in place. Unfortunately a lot of the times when having something custom made in Bali, it is simply not as precise as one would have wished - and so the windows didn’t quite fit at first. But after some sanding and readjusting, we were finally able to make them fit.

Thanks so much for reading, I hope you’ll feel inspired to create your very own creative space too!