Wealden Times | WT258 | November 2023 | Christmas Gift Supplement inside

This page: A backgammon scoreboard is tucked away behind a
set of doors above the dining table. Mel and his team have been
creative with every inch of this property, including putting the bin
on a wooden base with castors to whizz around where needed
Mel had been looking for a new photographic studio, and
while not sure what form it would take, he was clear what
it wouldn’t be. “I didn’t want a shop or industrial unit,” he
says, “which didn’t actually leave many options – so many of
the old buildings in the area have already been converted.”
But in the serendipitous way of things, the property came
up through a friend of a friend. “It needed everything
doing to it, but I knew it was the perfect studio space.”
The one storey building has had many uses in
its time, once a school room and most recently an
art gallery, as evidenced by what was left behind.
“There was a little tea hatch and a loo, strip lights,
a storage loft,” he says. “We ripped it all out.
Everything. We had skips here for six weeks.”
Mel, Jon and Jon’s son George – who “came in to help
for a week and stayed for a year” – set to work. They
pulled down the whole of the ceiling, leaving just the
structural joists and then put down scaffolding boards.
Mel could see from the outside that the pitch of the
roof was high – something that was hard to visualise
initially from inside. “I knew there was space, but didn’t
think about it at all because the ceiling was there. I
thought, if there was a possibility, a vaulted ceiling
was a must, because it would give me more light.”
The space turned out to be bigger than he imagined,
so he decided to install a tiny second floor. “Once
the ceiling was down I could see there was room for a
mezzanine and planned to make just a little one – and
then decided to do a bigger one and extend it. We
started at the top – I never realised that was the best
place to start,” he says, “but of course it makes sense.”
Unfortunately the only way was down in more ways than
one – he hit rock bottom when they reached the floor.
Replacing it really was the low point of the build for Mel
– “a black moment in the whole thing”. It was a gruelling,
back-breaking task, involving lifting ancient Canadian
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