We've all seen it. You know you've sat in a reception area, a hotel room, a hair salon, halfway through an episode from five years ago, vaguely dissociated and perhaps drooling a bit. Sometimes when watching the famously campy (and snippy) duo on "Love It or List It", the "list it" option seems too good to be true. Sure enough, after the shiny introduction, we find that the property is absolutely riddled with caveats. In a year, you'll need to replace the roof. The water heater is on the fritz. The last owner lost a series of gerbils in the basement but doesn't answer emails about it. And yet, sometimes we still root for the "grass is always greener" option.
The "list it" route won out when we moved to our new townhome in August and I needed to decide where my new studio would reside. If I were to "love it", I'd simply cram all my tools into the downstairs of our new home, not gaining any square footage, but not losing any production time. Cramped, easy, cheap. Instead, I opted for a different option, one with far more potential space for expansion and less risk of tripping over rolls of leather when you walk into our house.
This new space comes with, again, some caveats, many of which would be quite at home on the show. It's not quite *finished*, this new studio. It was not move-in-ready. It's a commute, albeit a short one. I became quite accustomed to working from home, and driving to work every day has classically been one of my least favorite things. Public transportation doesn't quite make it all the way there, on time or otherwise. But! I can at least 2x my work space, fit new tools and larger tables, and easily clean the concrete floors. The rent is very manageable, and I can, theoretically, leave work at work. There are definite benefits to jumping into the new space. But, let's not forget, it isn't quite *finished*. I am forever grateful to the good folks helping out to assemble my new studio, and I know that I am not the only one excitedly anticipating getting back to full capacity after a difficult move. I'm sure that time is coming soon. It's never easy to move, and it's never easy to own a business. Those two things together make for some really special bouts of self-doubt.
Hopefully, memories of the studio move and the decisions that lead up to it don't continue to roll ad infinitum behind my eyelids like so much syndicated television.
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Thomas