FINISHING UP

The temperature has plummeted of late, but things have been hotting up in getting my shed/office revamped.

One big step I was racing toward was getting the roof finished so that I could concentrate on the inside. There had been a great deal of rain recently, which held up progress, but finally I had a window of dry weather last week.

What I should have recalled from previous work like this, is that nothing is straight forward, and you always uncover extra work. As I stripped off the old felt, to my horror I discovered dry rot, with the telltale spidery white mould creeping across large areas of the existing timber.

This had been caused by the old felt degrading in areas around the nails that attached it to the roof, and tiny amounts of water creeping in over the past 10 years.

There is only one solution, and that is to cut it all out, plus additional surrounding wood to ensure eradicating it. Then it all had to be replaced. After half a days work, finally, I could level the roof out with sheets of 3mm ply before laying EPDM, a rubber sheet material with a 50 year guarantee.

Now I'm ready to reinstate the inside, which I hope to achieve over the course of the next week, now that I have some free time on my hands.

This is because The Film Academy Edinburgh that I started back in July, has just held its first end of term showcase.

We decided to run it as a chat show, with two sofas in the middle of the stage, where three cast and crew would have a Q&A about their films they had just completed, with the rest of students taking turns to film everything. We screened the film first then invited the students onto stage.

It was a nerve racking hour for me, as I had handed over the whole event to the students.

But it was a great success, and after three months of hard work by them, and me driving them hard, we ended on a high.

Term two starts on 11 January, and the following week I'm hoping to open a second academy on a Wednesday. We're only half way there in numbers required, but I remain optimistic.

Meanwhile I'm looking forward to conducting all the Academy business from my new office space, if I ever get it finished!

Here's the students behind the scenes film from the past few months (click on the picture below):