Site selection and clearance

We had two main options for where to site the studio: at the bottom of the garden some 30 metres from the house, or just behind the garage in the space currently occupied by an old, leaking shed and some bits of concrete path. We chose the latter primarily because of the ease of running power to the site as I didn’t have much of a desire to dig a 30 metre trench.

Costs to clear away the old shed were relatively modest however, due to the fact that the old shed had a corrugated asbestos roof, we did have to pay a bunch of cash to get that removed. In the event I bought a some fine partical masks (to prevent me inhaling dust), some disposable coveralls (to stop dust getting caught on my clothes), and waited until it was lashing it down with rain (so the dust didn’t get into the air), and then removed the roof myself (whilst wet and miserable). We then paid a contractor to take away the asbestos for disposal.

Costs for site selection and clearance: £723.00

• 2 skips @ £192.00 each inc VAT
• Removal of asbestos @ £294.00 inc VAT
• New angle grinder @ £45.00 inc VAT

Hints and tips for someone else doing much the same thing:

• Ring around the list of folks in yellow pages for asbestos removal as I was quoted between £290.00 and £540.00. Start by calling 3 and if they’re all roughly the same just pick one. If they’re wildly different, as they were here, keep calling until you get the cheapest price.

Background and context

My wife is an equestrian artist (www.sallylancaster.co.uk) and, when we moved into our current house last year, she took up residence in the dining room and has been using it as her studio. Unfortunately we’d like to create a kitchen-diner and so, with zero experience or consideration of how badly it might go wrong, we decided to build her a studio in the garden.

After a bit of casting around the solution we’ve gone for is one of those ‘log cabin’ style garden offices that we’ll build and then add additional insulation etc ourselves. Arriving at this solution was a fairly simple process of elimination as we don’t have the cash to employ someone to build us something proper and I don’t have the confidence to build something out of nothing – hence buying a kit and customising.

So I hope this is useful to someone, somewhere and if you think I’ve made any hideous errors pop a comment on the post so I can keep an eye out as it all falls apart.

Thanking you.