Good morning everyone
The Hive-Woodpeckers group is now officially open and we had our first session this week!
I am currently running test sessions to get the users used to the workshop and and this week we welcomed our first member.
It was a balmy 30 Degrees in the workshop and the fan wasn't even keeping us cool at all.
The workshop is still a bit under construction as well which makes it a bit of a nightmare at the moment for the sessions.
So we took it out into the garden for our first session for some fun in the sun!
I would like to say a massive thankyou to the parents of our first user today, they really loved it and even posed for a photo for us!
I started by going through a rather boring health and safety discussion with our user, and highlighting the need for discussion of any issues that came up in the session.
Luckily it was a very smooth and chilled session and we both really enjoyed it.
First we treated some wooden planters I had made recently, but had been saving until we officially started up.
2 coats of wood preserver were applied to both planters. This was done to keep the wood in the best condition possible and to protect it from rot for many years to come.
Allowing 30 minutes between coats allowed the preserver to soak into the wood as much as possible.
Once it had soaked in and dried you couldn't even tell anything had been put on, they still looked really good and natural.
Because we were working outside, we didn't have a surface to work on. So I moved one of the shelf racking in the workshop out so that we had a nice and comfortable working height to get painting!
This finish was after 2 coats had been applied and it really looks lovely now.
The grey is a nice colour and will compliment the Olive trees that it will be housing really nicely.
The paint selected was Wilko Garden Colour in Grey Slate.
The label does make it look a lot darker, but no amount of coats made it that shade as we tried 7 coats on a scrap piece and it didn't get much darker than the 2 coats strangely.
We have bought a few tins of different colours so we will test them out and see if any actually look remotely like the example shown on each tub.
This is the finished articles in full view. Our user did an amazing job and stuck to it the whole time they were with us.
I am really proud of what they achieved that day. The determination in someone so young was outstanding.
Our members will be in the age range 6 to teens. Some with additional learning needs so each session will be tailored to the individual users that day.
This will allow everyone to take part and no one will get left behind.
The session has highlighted that I need to get some shelves put up urgently for their work to be stored if they don't finish it in the sesssions!