After building Giggle Ridge Adventure Golf and relocating back to the Fraser Valley (after eighteen years on Vancouver Island) we found ourselves at a crossroads. For a time we seriously considered becoming a design studio only, leaving the construction of our projects to others. After much thought, I decided I couldn’t give up working with my hands as I enjoyed it so much. But if I was to continue building our complex projects I needed to do it much more efficiently. It was time to build the shop I had been dreaming of for the last twenty years. We purchased a small acreage in the tiny village of Yarrow with the intent of building a new house and shop.

I drew up plans for the shop and excitedly showed them to Janis. She studied them carefully and then shook her head no. I was devastated. After so many years of dreaming, I thought it was at last the right time. What she said next shocked me. Janis told me to rip up these plans and go back to my drawing board. She instructed me to instead plan the ultimate studio with a much bigger shop space attached. We would live in the tiny old farmhouse for now. The dream shop would come first and the new house would follow when the time was right which turned out to be ten years later.

The shop instantly changed the way we did business. Instead of fabricating everything on our customer’s worksites, out in the weather and far from home, we instead worked in the comfort of our own studio. No time was wasted setting up each morning and then tucking all the tools into the tool trailer each evening. Best of all I got to work in our own backyard and still do all that I loved. It was the best of all worlds. When we finished our work we would ship the completed pieces to our customers.

We were exactly where we wanted to be and we were confident the world would soon beat a path to our door.