There are many reasons why becoming a homeowner has been really exciting, but high up on the list is the fact that I now have the space to
construct my own board. I've been living
in rented accommodation since leaving my parents and going off to uni in 2002
so I've never been able to drill, saw and generally vandalise my home in order
to dangle from my fingers. I've partly
circum-navigated this issue by using temporary kit – rock rings hung from
rafters and a Beastmaker mounted on a board that fits onto and off an Argos pull-up bar (a
design dreamed up by Murdo, my training guru), but nothing beats the
convenience of having your own setup in the garage.
Since Rich built his I've been a regular in the exclusive
Bettsmaker user group, and although every session I have there is a general
lesson in punishment and humiliation I do think it’s probably given me some
gains. If nothing else, I love the
simplicity of board sessions: short, sharp, hard. In the near future I can only imagine that
life is going to get busier, so being able to get in regular good sessions
without having to trek into town will be a big bonus.
So now it’s on. The
month of January, a month that’s brought some of the wildest weather for a
while, has been put aside for me to convert our big wooden leaking shed into a,
um, big wooden leaking shed with a board in it.
At the start of the process I knew almost nothing about construction or
woodwork or design, but a couple of weeks in I’m pleasantly surprised at how
things are going. I still know nothing
about construction or woodwork or design, but I’m learning that with a liberal
application of cement, screws, bolts and half-arsed trigonometry and with
regular trips to Wickes, Homebase and Highland Industrial Supplies to buy an
armoury of metalwork, you can make things stand up and stick together.
