Long ago, before the new studio, I worked in a pumphouse.
A 6' X6' pumphouse, uninsulated, with the pump still in it.
When I decided I'd like it for a studio, I spent countless hours removing the junk piled up inside and putting in a couple salvaged windows for cross ventilation. The door wouldn't shut, so I found another one with a window in it, and painted the door bright red. With blue-green dragonflies.
I traded some of my initial lopsided bowls for the work of a carpenter friend, who boarded up the ceiling.
Then I had a lean-to shed built to the side so my tiny kiln would be somewhat protected from the weather. (Oh those days of trying to glaze while the rain poured down, or the sun sizzled down, or the icy wind flew sideways through the lean to opening. I was actually learning how to mix my own glazes then and would often stand there motionless, ignoring even a light breeze, staring at an old metal scale, which I desperately willed to stay motionless so I could get a measurement of this or that exactly right, down to the last gram.)
Inside the pumphouse I wedged my mom's old wheel; this wheel actually sports a stone for the kicking stone along with a seat that looks like it came off an old tractor.
A couple shelves, a 3X3' canvas board atop an old kitchen cabinet (my platters were smaller then), some wooden boards to shove in the gaps in the floor where the squirrels crept in at night. And I was ready.
I worked in that pumphouse seven years. I had a lot of failures and a few successes. But I knew I was on to something when the weekend would come and, no matter how bitter or blistering the weather, I'd find myself there.
The door to my current studio now gazes across the land at the old pumphouse. And this is a true confession: the new studio is like a cream puff of a place compared to the old pumphouse, which has now been turned into a tool shed.
But I like the view. I think it's good to remember where you came from, what you did for love.
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