Built in only two days, here is what it looked like after they left on the first day:

The outside looks a little bit like a temporary builder’s cabin and desperately needs softening up with a stack of plants, but that will happen over time (there are plans to re-do that horrible covered patio area and put in some beds around the shed, but for now we both need a bit of a rest after this shed project).

It’s been up for 3 weeks and since then Tim has been busy putting up 3 rows of shelving and I’ve been busy hauling box after box after box (probably 300 boxes in all) from storage and moving them into the shed and up onto the shelves.

The packing area is all set up and, although it’s a little rudimentary, it’s a nice area to work in.

The guy from Fair Dinkum came Tuesday the 4th of May to erect the shed.  The moment he got out of his car he was complaining that the pieces of the shed were too far away from the slab (the pieces were only 15 metres away) and that it would take his three guys 4 hours to move it (needless to say, Tim and I moved the shed closer to the slab that same afternoon amd it took us just 1.5 hours); he complained that the slab was not level and was out of square and was short on one end 3cm and told me I needed to spend $1,800 on having the sides of the slab cut and having the pieces of the shed cut to size (I am so friggin’ cheesed off with my concretor. I specifically asked him if his work was square and level and he categorically told me it was. And I’m cheesed off with myself for not friggin measuring the slab before that concretor guy left. That guy stood against his car with his arms crossed and said “I’m not leaving until I’m paid”. So I stupidly gave him a cash cheque to get him to leave and off he went into the sunset [well, he naturally went to the bank first to cash the cheque then he disappeared into the sunset]).  The shed guy told me that he could build the shed using the slab as it is (out of square) but that the end result wouldn’t be pretty to look at and I wouldn’t be able to sell my house because the columns on the inside of the shed would be criss-crossed and the walls on the outside would be in the shape of a tee-pee (yes, he made a tee-pee action with his arms).  So after the doom and gloom of never ever being able to sell my house becase of an irregular shaped shed, they left pretty soon after that and I was left to look at the shed on the floor – once again.

When Tim came home that evening I told him what had happened and explained to him what the shed guys told me. To my surprise, he was confused about why they couldn’t erect the shed even if the slab wasn’t square. He looked at the plans for the shed and drew me out a few quick sketches and showed me that even though the slab was unsquare, the shed itself could still be built square, because the bolts weren’t attached to the side of the slab but were to be placed about 9cm in from the slab. It turns out all the shed guy needed to do was run a piece of string around the outside of the slab, take some key measurements, make a few calculations and then the shed can be built nice and square on the unsquare slab (sure, there might be 1 or 2cm gap between the outside wall of the shed and the end of the slab, but that can easily be filled in and it will cost a damn lot less than the $1,800 the shed guy was asking me to pay!)

After the shed guy left that day, for the next few days we took the time to speak to numerous people and some friends and family and most said that there must be a more simple and less expensive solution to what the guy told us needed to be done. After all, not every single slab in the world would be 100% square and perfect, there has to be some special tricks that are used by those in the trade to get a shed erected nicely – right? Fromwhat other people have said they’re really confused about why this guy didn’t just run the string line around the slab and just erect the shed and get it over and done with. At best, the guy was unwilling to provide a rational solution for us. At worst, he was incapable of thinking of such a solution (or perhaps he was trying to secure some work for his concrete cutting friends hmm?).

Almost 4 weeks after the installer guy came, complained and left, we’re finally at the point where the owner of the shed company has spoken to the installer guy and we’ve made a new time for the installer  guy to come and put up the shed. So the new date for the beginning of the shed is 8 June 2010 (well, we’re aiming for 2010 anyway).

I’m really upset about this delay because the owner of the shed company knows how important it is to me to have the shed up quickly. It pees me off because on their website, they have numerous testimonials from their previous customers who were all apparently so happy about how promptly they had their new shed installed. Yes, good for them. Unfortunately I haven’t had the same experience as those people.

I even went to the trouble of preparing a Visio diagram for these guys which sets out exactly what the installer needs to do and where the bolts need to be positioned.  So far, I’ve done more work on this shed than the friggin’ shed company. We’ve done what the shed guy asked (moving the shed pieces, grinding the rough, raw edge of the concrete slab off) and we’ve waited patiently for the return of phone calls which never come when promised. We’ve always had to follow these people up and press them for answers. Like yesterday afternoon, the installer guy said he was on his way home and would be in touch with us in an hour when he gets home and he can look in his diary for his next available appointment. We had to follow-up an hour and a half later, then he said “Give me half an hour and I’ll call you and let you know when I’m coming to install the shed.” We waited the rest of the night and still no friggin phone call. So 9.00am this morning we called him and the explanation was that he’d gone out to dinner with his wife! Great, how nice for you!

Argh I know this is a really long and uninspiring post but I’m so frustrated and I just had to get this off my chest. This project has now been going on since the beginning of April and going by the testimonials on the shed company’s website I would have bet that by now I’d have a shed to store my stock in and be able to get my packing room moved out of the house and into the shed. If you’re interestd, here is what the shed should look like when it’s finished:

For anyone who is reading my posts because they’re interested in moving to Tasmania, or if you are already in Tasmania and want to have work or improvements done to your house in Tasmania, please get in touch with me and I can certainly tell you those people whom I DO NOT recommend for various building works. One thing is for certain:  we are gathering plenty of experience as we proceed in our little renovation adventures here in Tasmania.

What’s been happening the last 4 weeks? Well, after we knocked the shed down, we had to clean up a bit, we cut up some of the pieces of wood that was left in piles. We made a lovely wood shelter from the old tin sheets that we removed from the roof of the shed. Like our handiwork?

We also had to hire a jackhammer and concrete saw to cut off 30cm from the long edge of the old concrete slab because it was completely hollow underneath due to excess water running along the edge over 30 years. That took some work. We filled two skip bins with concrete boulders.

The dogs were very confused about where the shed had gone:

After knocking off the side of the old cracked slab, we had to hire a mini digger to remove the dirt from underneath where the pavers were pulled up. We were going to do this by hand but quickly realised we would kill ourselves, so in came the Toro Dingo to the rescue:

Then once the area was all flat and the mounds of dirt had been removed, in came the concretor guy to box the area up, place metal mesh (reinforcing) over the old concrete slab and then pour in three truck loads of new concrete. Here’s the finished product:

As you can see, we have had a lovely new fence installed along the back.

I can feel that we’re almost there. After all this, we’re due for a break so we’re shortly heading off to the central coast of New South Wales for 3 days where I’m booked in for a nice back and shoulder massage. Then when we come back it’ll be work work work again moving my boxes of business stock from the storage unit into the new shed. Woohoo!

With a lot of help from our neighbour (he owns a very powerful chainsaw), we spent 3 big days over the Easter long weekend working on demolishing the shed and it’s now in pieces in a big pile waiting to be cut into firewood for burning in our heater this winter. Here’s some of the fun we’ve had over the past few days:

First step was to remove the sheets of zincalume from the roof of the shed.

We disturbed three possums whose house was in the roof of the shed. This last one didn’t want to leave, poor little thing (now he’s living underneath our house   )

Next was to call in the neighbour with the big chainsaw and start cutting some of those timber beams connecting the roof to the vertical posts:

Then we get the angle grinder and cut these heavy-as steel railway lines which connects the patio to the shed (yes, the previous home owner used old railway lines as supports for their patio):

Then eventually it looks like this:

We had to leave that back wallwith the funky wallpaper standing so as to keep the doggies in (that temporary steel fencing you can see on the left has now been moved over to the right, so if that funky wall came down, there’d be a big gap between our property and the paddock next door and Smokey and Cloe would be off).  Speaking of doggies, here’s one now, laying in the sun watching us do all the work  :)  :

Now we wait for the weekend when we go to the hire shop, pay our $80 and get the use of a concrete cutter for 24 hours, during which time we hope to shave 30 cm of concrete off each side of the existing concrete slab (why? because the edges of the concrete are crumbling and it needs a nice new edge on the side of the slab). Then next week we will have a concretor come with a truck full of concrete and he’ll make us a nice new concrete slab over the top of the old cracked one. Then we wait about 7 days for the concrete to dry (if there is no rain) and then we can have the shed company come and drop off the shed bits and pieces and then about a week after that we’ll have a new shed all ready to be used.

Then I can tidy up the back yard after stuff was just dumped everywhere and anywhere and perhaps build a little wood shelter for all this new firewood we’ve got!

Tim is back working with Australia Post here in Tasmania. After arriving in Tasmania, he was told that he would have little chance of working with them here because they have no turnover of staff. But last month there was an ad, he applied and got the job. It will be a bit different for him because he is now riding a motorcycle to deliver the mail, rather than riding a bicycle.

We just had Tim’s mum over for a visit and she flew back to Sydney today. Prior to her arrival, I ordered a bunch of bulbs, tubers, warratahs and proteas from a nursery that I discovered at Salamanca a little while ago, Vogelvry Bulbs & Flowers. While Tim’s mum was here, we paid a visit to Salamanca and I arranged to collect my order from them at the market. I ordered a whole stack of different proteas and warratahs and although I’m happy that they were reasonably priced, I’m a bit disappointed that it appears that a few of them appear to be clippings that have been set in pots.  Anyway, it’s good to finally get them in the Australian native garden bed that I built a while ago and that I’m hoping will take off next year. In this bed already are 3 different types of kangaroo paw: yellow gem, big red and an in-between colour, a mix of green, yellow and red. a multi-coloured kangaroo paw. I am thinking there is way too many plants in this bed. They are little plants now but the proteas and the warratahs will grow quite big, as big as a lemon tree, and so I will probably be transplanting them into a new bed in spring. The kangaroo paws clump to become quite large plants about a metre wide, so they may need to be divided in a couple of years.

Grevillea on the right with kangaroo paw to the left and 2 baby protea plants behind:

Yellow Gem kangaroo paw:

I had planted many seeds of broccoli, raddish, cabbage, beetroot and carrot and in the past month or so they have all really come on well and they were getting to the stage where they had to be transplanted. I germinated some lettuce seeds in the seedling trays and planted those a couple of weeks ago. Already they are strong and very healthy looking.

As there is currently a lack of space in the apple crates that we set up as raised veggie gardens, I tilled over a patch of dirt underneath the laundry window and transplanted some of the seedlings there.

The seedlings that have been planted in the apple crate veggie gardens are coming on quite well. They are the tomatoes, corn and zucchini that were planted as purchased seedlings way back in about October last year. The corns should be twice their size and there should at least be some fairly large corns growing in the cob by now. They’ve been there for close to 6 months now and there’s not much happening with those so they may have to be sacrificed to make room for other healthy seedlings that are waiting to be transplanted. In this photo, you can see the tomatoes growing on the vine (there’s one red tomato there that needs to be plucked off) and the two zucchini plants are located in the front left and the front right. Then in front of the zucchini plants in a long row are the carrots that are coming along steadily.

Then there are the radishes that I grew from seed. I pulled these radishes out of the ground last week. We have about 9 radishes that we have to find something to do with (personally, I like to eat them raw dipped in a little bit of salt, but I think we should find something better to do with them). There are 8 more tomatoes that are growing on the vines that we will also have to find something to do with. Although these tomato plants are tiny, they have done well to produce such juicy healthy tomatoes.

I have ordered direct from Laminex a long benchtop (3.6 metres wide) which I plan to use as a new desk in the study.  I’ve chosen the Laminex colour ”Anticipation”:

It will be about twice the length of my current desk (which Tim is currently sharing with me) and I plan to buy some large brackets to be fixed to the wall at the back so that it supports the benchtop underneath, kind of becoming a floating desk. This was a bit of a splurge ($692 ) and they DON’T deliver, so we have to arrange for our own delivery on top of that price, probably another $70-$100.  For anyone considering purchasing direct from Laminex, be warned:  they DON’T DELIVERY! Plus, they charge a $30.00 “logistics fee” (which from what I understand is a fee they charge for manufacturing it and then delivering it to the showroom).

I hope that the new floating desk idea is a success because as I resigned from my ‘day job’ last week, I will now be working full-time in my business and getting lots of use out of the desk. Considering that the price of one good quality large office desk is about $300-$350 at Officeworks, I think the benchtop purchase will be comparatively cost-effective as buying two large desks, plus the “Anticipation” colour I’ve chosen is a little bit different to the desks that you find in Officeworks.

As I now don’t have to give my days over to someone else’s business anymore, I might now actually start getting some things done in my business and maybe even get some  things done to this house, such as, maybe, painting some of the rooms … !

The first major project though, is the new shed. Once the shed is built then we can clear two rooms full of boxes of stuff and pieces of furniture that need to be sanded and polished and then those rooms and be decorated.

For the shed project, first, we need to cut down all the ivy that is growing on the fence on and around the existing shed.  Then there needs to be a new fence erected just behind the existing old shed (we need the fence going in so that the dogs don’t get out of the yard when the existing shed is demolished, it’s currently the only barrier between our property and next door!).  Then the existing shed has to be dismantled and thrown in a skip. Then we have to cut 30cm off of one of the long sides of the old concrete slab (because there are massive cracks running underneath the old concrete slab and need to come out so that the new concrete will be poured on a steady surface). Then the concretor needs to come in and lay new concrete over the top of the old concrete and dig footing holes for the struts of the shed to be concreted down into. Then the shed guys have to come and erect the shed. Hopefully it will all go smoothly.

Unfortunatley for me, ordering through the Australian company means that I will be paying $500 to $1,000 extra a year to have Amy Butler patterns stocked in my store. For other businesses this may not sound very much money to worry about but with the economic situation the way it is around the world, but my one business goal this year is to cut costs. Removing $500 to $1,000 from my annual profit does not seem to be in line with this goal(!) I guess my options are: If I still want to have Amy Butler patterns available in my business (1) Just order from the Australian business and take the brunt of the price increase; (2) Contact the Australian business and negotiate a better price with them; (3) Sell out of the current stock of patterns and don’t re-order. Oh my god this is one thing that I don’t need to have to think about right now. What an absolute kick in the pants this is. *sigh* Actually I don’t want to think about it right now because it’s the Australia Day long weekend from tomorrow and I’m going to our nation’s capital for two nights to not think about my business!

Anyway, there are other pattern companies out there that are very similar to Amy Butler’s style and I think my customers would be intersted in those as well.

Ones I am thinking of include: Anna Maria Horner (looks like she has some commercial patterns coming out soon-ish), and Heather Bailey (not a large range of patterns, but hopefully this year she will be working on some more patterns).

Oh and by the way I am loving Anna Maria Horner’s rugs!

As we were waiting for the doors to open, we had some lovely champagne and some nice little sate chicken kebab type things, little mini pizzas, spring rolls, dim sims and some other little things that I didn’t get to see. Here’s a photo of everyone ejoying the drinks:

The doors to the Sydney Room were opened and everyone filed in. Tim and I found two perfect seats together and we sat down. On everyone’s chair there were these little Amy Butler packs:

Inside the plastic bag we found:

2 window stickers (’Amy Butler products sold here’)
1 free pattern – Bed Bug Pillows
1 free pattern – The Swing Bag
And 1 postcard

So, soon enough Amy Butler is invited up onto the stage and a young girl from Living Creatively interviews her briefly before Amy begins her talk. Here is a photo of the interview:

And I just had to take a photo of the mirrored ceiling in this room. From where I was sitting there was a perfect reflection of Amy Butler and the interviewer:

Amy’s talk basically consisted of a Powerpoint presentation with various images (most if not all from her Midwest Modern book) and as she was going though the presentation she would explain what we were seeing.

She showed us images of her previous brands and incarnations. It may come as a surprise to many that she actually picked apples for a short time to help put food on the table. She did this in between the times when she would design greeting cards and gift wrap paper for Hallmark. She said she would receive $200 – $300 for a design. She also talked about the process of designing fabric patterns, where she gets her inspiration from (her garden) and getting the pattern from the computer to the printing mill and then the process of marketing the products at quilt shows and trade fairs etc. She took us through the process of creating a bag pattern, from the various testers and sewists that are involved in testing the pattern and making sure the instructions are all correct, and the process of taking photographs for the front of the pattern. She enlists all types of people for modeling the products in her patterns. One girl is her dentist’s assistant, another she found in a local store, and another is her best friend. She also showed us a photo of her team that works at her studio in Greenville Ohio.

When the presentation had finished Amy appeared at the back of the room pen in hand and ready for signing autographs and appearing in photos.
 

So I scrambled into the queue with my Amy Butler bag and Tim stood behind me holding the camera. In the queue I got talking to a lady – Robyn D, and I introduced myself as the owner of Tall Poppy Craft Products. Robyn seemed very surprised to meet me as the way she found out about this event was through reading the Tall Poppy Craft Products email newsletter. I couldn’t believe it! That’s now two people who only found out about a particular event through reading my email newsletter!

Anyway, eventually I got my turn with Amy and, well, here are the photos:

Tim said that I looked like a gospel of Jesus when I was with her She said she loved my bag and I was of course chuffed

She actually spent quite a bit of time with me. I mentioned to her that my company actually buys a lot of patterns from her studio and she seemed genuinely appreciative. I asked her how she manages to keep so level-headed and she paused for a moment and gave me quite a thoughtful answer – basically she said that every day she tries to be gracious and thankful of what she has and that you need to focus on the bigger picture and to be grateful for the people who help her run her business. She said that there are times when things are flustered (which I was so glad to hear her say, not in a spiteful kind of way but because its so good to know that she is a normal person!) but she tries not to sweat the small stuff. All this time she was signing my Midwest Modern book. Here is a picture of what she signed:

I really wanted to ask her to draw me a picture of a frog or a mushroom because on this page it reads:

“As a young girl I excelled at drawing mushrooms, frogs and flowers.”

But I didn’t have the courage to ask her!

She also signed my In Stitches book but I think Tim distracted her and she ended up writing ‘To Dear Robyn’ (which was the lady before me). She was so apologetic. She said she would arrange for another book to be sent from her studio to me and she would make it extra special. But in the meantime she crossed out ‘Robyn’ and wrote ‘But really its Miss Sarah!’. Here’s a photo:

In a funny way I’m glad that the super Amy Butler makes the same kind of silly mistakes that I make every day.

Tim said to Amy that I’ve been so excited about meeting her and that he’s never seen me so excited about anything. Then we parted ways and that was the night. We had pizza on the way home.

I keep the to do list in a blank email in Outlook and save it in the drafts folder. Then if I come across any good ideas on the net I just copy and paste or quickly type in the information into the list. This way it saves me having a gazillion post-it notes around the house. Here’s what it currently looks like:

I carry a notebook with me in my handbag so that if I think of any good ideas on the train or in the cab on the way home from work I just jot them down and then later on transfer them into the to do list on the computer. I used to keep my to do list in my actual notebook but it didn’t really work for me. Then I tried keeping my to do list in the ‘Tasks’ section of my Outlook. It didn’t work for me in the end but what I do like about that method is that there is an option to tick the task off as it is completed. With the current to do list, I simply delete the task once I’ve done it – there’s a certain satisfaction that you get when you actually see the task crossed out. I should start striking through the completed tasks in the Outlook to do list so that I can see that things are eventually getting done.

Running a business is hard work. I used to be organized. These days I wouldn’t know if I was coming or going. BAS statements are due at the end of this month so I’ve got to get all the paperwork and invoices paid together and send them to my accountant. That task alone takes the better part of an afternoon. I would love to have an assistant to help me with errands and day-to-day things so that I can really concentrate on growing my business. There’s always something that interrupts my day – whether it be the fact that the washing up hasn’t been done for 2 days, or the fact that the floor needs hoovering and mopping or that the place needs a general tidy up and the courtyard needs to be swept …

Let’s start with the bad things:

I hadn’t expected the first day to be so busy and despite all the months of preparation beforehand, I was ill-prepared. I had patterns that still hadn’t been packaged for hanging on the display unit, I had other things that hadn’t gone up on the display and I was flustering about on the first morning before Georgia (Tim’s mum) came in to help that morning. By the end of the second day we had shuffled some products around a bit and I felt that I was starting to improve preparation-wise. By the third day it seemed that everything was under control. I thought I would only need Tim’s mum for the first day and the Saturday and Sunday but she ended up coming to help the fully day for each day of the show. I couldn’t have done it without her – thanks Georgia! (And by the final day of the show Georgia had almost completely lost her voice and she still came in to help – what a trooper!)

Unfortunately the guy at Reed Exhibitions who signed me up for the show put me on a stand which was in a completely different building to that of the main building, where most of the potential customers were. I should have cottoned onto this when I first signed up but I just wanted to get into the show and to be honest I didn’t even understand the concept that there was a second building. When I went there as an observer last year there was just one building with several levels and I thought that I was on one of those levels in that building. Throughout the show, there were announcements over the pa system that a second building existed but unfortunately these announcements seemed to dissipate as the show went on. Sunday was the day that I was expecting to be our biggest day and it was actually our worst – we had approximately 75% less customers on Sunday than we did on Saturday. There was only one announcement about the second building that I heard on Sunday.

Also, I wasn’t happy about these little tid bits:

• When I arrived on set up day on Tuesday the 19th I discovered that they had spelt the name of my company incorrectly on the sign. They had spelt it Tall Poppy Craft Productcts. Idiots! By the next morning it had been corrected but they’d used upper case instead of lower case which didn’t match the rest of the text. Ugggh!
• After the hustle and bustle of the first day it came to my attention that in fact the whole floor plan that I was provided with had been completely changed around. My stand was supposed to be directly opposite the Lincraft stand. But instead I ended up being directly opposite the ‘Create, Make and Decorate stage’. Granted, this gave us something to look at on Sunday when we were bored out of our mind but it also gave potential customers something to look at so they ended up walking straight past my stand – sometimes without evening seeing it at all.
• We were near the ‘Living Creatively’ stand which was an unmanned stand and was just a series of 3 or 4 plasma TVs with a repeating DVD and soundtrack. The soundtrack consisted of 3 songs which were played over and over again for the 7 hours of each day of the show. It drove me insane.
• On Sunday (the final day of the show) the Cake Decorators Guild of NSW used the stage to present their cake decorating awards. Unfortunately for us the crowd of Guild members and their friends and family gathered around the stage and in front of the stand, completely blocking it off from anyone who wanted to come past. The presentation went on for about an hour – we made no further sales after 3.54pm that afternoon because of the cake decorators. Thanks for the consideration folks!
• Some people mentioned that the advertising for the show had been pretty poor this year. One lady who came to my stand said that the only reason she found out about the show was through being a member of our mailing list.

I have since found out that Reed Exhibitions had recently sold the show to Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s company, Living Creatively. I think the care factor slipped because this was the last show that they would be hosting so they had no further responsibility for the show. I sent them a letter outlining my feedback so we’ll see if I even get a response.

When all is said and done at the end of it I came out about $2,000 ahead. At least I didn’t lose money but $2,000 is not much when you consider the amount of money paid for the stand itself, the investment in all the display units and the point of sale software and all the months of preparation and the 14 hour days that I had while the show was on. Had I been in the first building I think I would have come out at least $6,000 ahead. What a bummer!

Now for the good things:

• I made $2,000 profit
• I didn’t lose money
• I got exposure for the business
• Quite a few members of the mailing list came out to use their early bird special
• I met one or two loyal customers and one or two crafty friends who took the time out to come and say hello – in particular, Bianca of Sadie & Lace – thanks Bianca! Bianca and I were swap partners for a craft swap on craftster about 5 or 6 years ago. She made me a lovely triple knitted scarf. I couldn’t believe it when Bianca came up and introduced herself – in fact, I think I blushed and it made my day!
• A lot of people took slips of paper with the business address and phone number on it
• A few of the other exhibitors interested in purchasing goods for their stores
• I know more about craft shows than I did before
• I know there is no need to prepare as much stock for next time (IF there is a next time)
• I have all the display units already for the next time (IF there is a next time)
• I know where I DON’T want to be for next time (IF there is a next time)