Playing It by Ear
Adam’s upcycled builds on a budget
by Mima Biddulph
with a foreword by George Clarke
by Mima Biddulph
with a foreword by George Clarke
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Narrative Non-Fiction Biography
When Adam discovered old double-deckers were cheap, he thought, ‘Everyone is missing a trick here. I could convert one of these. A second home for surfing breaks: happy days!’ This entertaining biography answers Adam’s frequent, optimistic question, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’
Impulsive carpenter Adam Collier-Woods has converted many things into homes over the past decade: a boat, a Big Green Bus, a van and a pile of shipping containers. He’s funny, stubborn, reckless and full of ideas, with inventive approaches to adversity. It’s hard to resist his irreverent joie de vivre and sense of adventure. He’s often on TV with his daughter, his dog and his upcycled, off-grid conversions, grinning with infectious enthusiasm in the face of imminent ruin, revelling in risk and making it up as he goes along. Despite infernos, plague and planning committees, he gets the job done with inspiring results. How and why? Find out in this pacy true tale of misadventure. As it did for this author, you may find it inspires your inner daredevil.
‘Adam is an architectural rebel, pushing the boundaries of designing and building to produce structures that are unique and playful... an Amazing Spaces warrior.’
George Clarke
- One look at his blood pumping into the clear fluid and your brave adventurer passed out and fell off the table. They had to smash the door down to deal with the chaos.
- He’d never sailed of course – had no idea what he was doing, but you know, ‘How hard can it be?’ he thought.
- It’s funny how, when you act on impulse and do things that would normally be considered mad or unwise, other quite sensible people often join in too, as though they were just waiting for an excuse to throw their homework on the fire and take the car downtown.
- This can backfire, obviously. Neither of us recommends you live your whole life like that, or on the roll of a die. Had he done some research, he’d have discovered that buses are cheap for a reason: you can’t put them anywhere and they’re a pain. Still, he had to make it happen once he’d agreed to buy the bus, so he did.
- Because you sit quite low in the front, it doesn’t feel like you’re driving a bus. It’s only when you look in the rearview mirror that you realise you’ve got this massive hunk of metal following you about. They did a little tour around this industrial estate. Adam reversed it round a corner and Mike said he was a natural. That bit of flattery was enough to make him part with four and a half grand! Well played, Mike.
- To give this bland, white kitchen a bit of Big Green Bus bling, he bought ready-cut Perspex with polished edges online. He chose a couple in every shade of green they had, in the right sizes for the cupboards and drawers and stuck them to the fronts with contact adhesive: not sophisticated, but very effective.
- He’d managed to buy end-of-line green material, left over from a local nightclub. Its properties were perfect: it was sick-proof, red-wine-proof, fire-proof – ideal for all eventualities, but he worried it was a bit too vivid a green. His worst fears were confirmed when he picked up the fabric – it was a kind of hellish luminous lime.
- Ménière's causes extreme and unpredictable dizziness and vertigo, with an overwhelming sensation of spinning. Out of nowhere, it can cause a drop attack. Your ears ring and your head spins, as if you’re being chucked about in a washing machine on the spin cycle. Before you know what’s going on, you vomit, or fall, or both…During an attack, he’d probably choose death if it were offered.
