Top Of The Pots

From Ground Screws to Glazing Mugs

If you'd told me twelve months ago that I'd end up spending part of my working week making coffees, filming social media videos and hosting hen parties in a pottery painting studio, I'd probably have wondered what on earth had happened to my career.

Yet here we are.

And with October half-term ending, it seems like a good opportunity to explain how someone who's spent most of his working life in construction now finds himself in a converted cow barn, surrounded by paintbrushes, mugs and an extraordinary number of different shades of pink.

It all started back in January.

We'd had a fair bit of snow, and Laura needed me to collect some stock for Top of the Pots, her pottery painting studio.

While I was there, I started looking at a room outside the main studio. It had been built several months earlier but had gradually become somewhere to store everything that didn't seem to have a home.

I'd been looking for something practical to get stuck into, so I decided that turning it into a proper party room would be a good project.

The only slight problem was that, despite spending most of my working life around construction, I no longer owned much in the way of tools. So I found myself borrowing equipment and gathering together what I needed.

Over the next five weeks, I cleared, decorated and fitted out the room, sorted the electrics and lighting, and started working on Laura's website, developing the party packages and online booking system.

We'd set ourselves a target of opening for February half-term, and somehow we got everything finished in time.

The room opened, the parties started coming in, and I felt quite pleased with myself.

Job done.

Or so I thought.

Laura was heading to Africa with friends for a couple of weeks in March, and we'd identified a few other things around the studio that needed attention.

The studio is in an old cow barn, with just one mains cold-water supply coming into the building. So one of my next projects was installing a heated water system and automatic taps, meaning customers could finally wash paint off their hands with warm water.

Not exactly glamorous, but you'd be amazed how much people appreciate it!

We also turned another room into an office, giving me somewhere to work, and by Easter most of those outstanding jobs were finished.

And somewhere along the way, something unexpected happened.

I started to really enjoy being here.

Not just doing the practical jobs, but meeting customers, making coffees and chatting to whoever happens to walk through the door.

Anyone who knows me will appreciate that the chatting part doesn't require much training.

The coffee making, however, has become something of an obsession.

I've spent hours watching videos about how to steam milk properly, trying to get that wonderfully silky texture and attempting a bit of latte art.

I've gone from studying structural foundations to watching somebody explain how to pour a heart into a cappuccino.

Quite the professional development programme.

And then there's the social media.

I've taken on creating content for the studio, which has turned out to be another unexpected source of entertainment.

I've never been particularly afraid of making a fool of myself, and now I've got an excuse to film silly videos, talk about pottery and generally have a bit of fun.

During the summer holidays, I even filmed my own version of Wish You Were Here, doing my best Judith Chalmers impression whilst promoting the delights of the pottery painting studio.

I've also developed a habit of signing off my videos with a little wink at the camera.

Apparently, a few customers have started noticing, because if I forget to do it, they'll actually ask where the wink has gone.

But I genuinely enjoy that freedom to have a laugh and put myself out there without worrying too much about what people think. It's probably one of the reasons I'm now comfortable writing these blogs.

Life can be serious enough without feeling we have to be serious all the time.

But the more time I spend in the studio, the more I appreciate something else.

There's a gentleman who regularly brings his grandchildren in to paint.

Four or five of them will sit around the table, each concentrating on their own creation, while Grandad enjoys a coffee and chats away with them.

He comes in roughly every six months because he loves having that time together. No rushing around, just everyone sitting together doing something they enjoy.

And a week later, they collect their finished pottery and have something to remember the occasion by.

I think that's lovely.

And it's something I see happening every day.

Families spending time together, friends catching up, couples on dates, people celebrating birthdays or simply taking a couple of hours out of their week.

It isn't really about the pottery.

It's about the time they're spending together.

As the party room became more established, I started developing opportunities for private hire, corporate events, baby showers, birthdays and hen parties.

These days I host most of our private evening events myself, which leads to some fairly unexpected experiences.

If you'd told me a few years ago that I'd be spending an evening hosting ten ladies at a hen party, painting pottery and knocking back shots as though they were in a nightclub, I'd have laughed, then brushed off the fact it would never really happen.

But here I am.

There are so many moments that mean an awful lot more to people than just painting an item.

One customer had painted with us around six years earlier, but health difficulties meant she no longer felt comfortable coming into the studio.

She was approaching her 60th birthday and wanted to enjoy pottery painting with her friends again.

That conversation inspired me to introduce our Paint at Home Kits.

People can now choose their pottery and paints, take everything home and enjoy the experience in their own time, without having to fit it into a two-hour studio session.

For this particular lady, it meant she could celebrate her birthday with ten people across two weekends in the comfort of her own home.

Afterwards, she contacted me to say how wonderful it had been to do something she hadn't felt able to do for years.

That meant a great deal to me.

The kits are now popular with couples too, taking home mugs to paint together and returning them for glazing and firing. A week or so later, they've got something to remind them of that evening.

And I think that's what I enjoy most about the whole experience.

Seeing people happy.

But while I've been busy discovering this completely different world, there's something I haven't properly mentioned yet.

Laura.

Top of the Pots is her business, and everything I've described has been possible because of the years of hard work, dedication and determination she's put into it.

I might have come along and built a party room, worked on the website or introduced a few new ideas, but she's the one who's built the business, created the atmosphere and put in the hours to make it what it is today.

And there's another side to that which means even more to me personally.

When I stepped away from my previous career last year, Laura was the one who continued working, running the studio and supporting our family while I figured out what came next.

While I was quietly working away on ideas for ModuFloor and eventually ModuSense, she was getting on with running her business.

She's given me the opportunity to take my time, explore those ideas and build something new without feeling I had to rush straight back into the same working life I'd left behind.

I don't underestimate that for a second.

And I think that's partly why I get so much enjoyment from being involved in the studio. It's an opportunity to support something she's worked incredibly hard to create, while discovering that I genuinely love being part of it.

We've even had a rather lovely bit of recognition recently, with Prospect Estate Agency choosing Top of the Pots as their local business of the month and producing a promotional video for the studio.

You can see a little of what makes Top of the Pots special in Prospect Estate Agency's Local Business of the Month video on Instagram

It's lovely to see Laura's business being recognised by others in the community, particularly knowing how much work goes on behind the scenes that customers never see.

And then, of course, there's the small matter of actually working alongside my wife every day.

People occasionally ask how that's going.

And the answer is that I genuinely love it.

That's not to suggest we don't occasionally get on each other's nerves. I'm perfectly aware that I can be a pain in the backside, and I'm sure Laura would happily provide examples if anybody asked.

But we've been through plenty together over the years, and we understand each other pretty well.

We have our moments, like any couple, but ultimately we get to spend our days together, have a laugh and enjoy what we're doing.

And we seem to have more of those days now than we've ever had before.

That's something I wouldn't want to lose.

Construction is still a huge part of my life, and I'm thoroughly enjoying developing ModuSense and the opportunities beginning to come from it.

But I've also discovered that I don't necessarily need every part of my working life to involve construction.

Sometimes it's rather nice to make somebody a coffee, have a laugh with customers or film myself doing something completely ridiculous for social media.

Looking back, it's funny to think all of this started because Laura needed somebody to collect some stock on a snowy January morning.

I went in looking for a project to keep myself busy.

Somewhere along the way, I found a lot more than that.

And none of it would have been possible without Laura.

Perhaps the biggest lesson has been remembering that it's perfectly all right to enjoy yourself, appreciate the people around you and not take life quite so seriously.

Although I'm still much more comfortable talking about ground screws than glazing mugs, I'm beginning to think there's room in my life for both.