Our Story
Alba Barrel Creations
We both had full-time jobs when the first lockdown hit in 2020. I fortunately could work from home, Grant wasn’t so lucky as a Driving Instructor. Gaining an extra four hours a day not commuting from the Trossachs to Edinburgh and with Grant unable to work we turned our extra time to home and garden improvements.
I had always wanted a firepit area. We went about clearing the space of turf, hefting 6 tonnes of chippies (gravel) to the area and building a firepit from cobblestones. Job done, we decided to light the pit of fire only to end up standing around as we had no suitable non-melty furniture on which to park our bums.
HELLO
My intrepid other half decided he fancied a throne fit for an esteemed Driving Instructor, to be fashioned from none other than a barrel that had held his favourite tipple, note the bottle opener for his other favourite tipple!
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Both being keen DIYers, making the seat took up some time and gave us a fair bit of hilarity.
How do you start cutting a barrel? What height should the seat be? Arms or no arms? What do we cut it with, a jigsaw, a circular saw, a HANDSAW???
OUCH! We kept getting skelfs (splinters)! "I know . . . we should sand it, should we clean it first? What with? Whisky?" The questions were endless and the answers sometimes dubious!
I was getting a tad bored not being allowed to play with the big power tools!
There is a fair amount of wood leftover from making barrel furniture and with our passion for recycling I started to footer (a good Scottish word for muck about) with ideas for using all the wood. Staves and bottles (from our COVID drinking) became wall vases, we discovered how to fit mechanisms for stave clocks and we made tealight holders.
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Grant finished his seat and proudly placed it at the firepit ready to be sat on . . . . there was just the one eensy weensy problem, I said . . . . “eh where's mine?” . . .. and a bench seat was duly made!
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Friends and family came and exclaimed about our recycled barrel seats and home art, some ordered our pieces and that. . . as they say. . . was that and Alba Barrel Creations was born.
My creative side surfaced when we started customising the barrels and staves with carvings and pyrography as well as adding a range of whisky decals to suit customers tastes.
We generally make to order and when we do try a new idea we will post it to see what folk think.
Our Custom Creations page has some ideas.
We now have a range of garden furniture with different seat and table styles, our gift range includes clocks, wall art, tealight holders and is expanding as new ideas and commissions come in.
Our Christmas wreaths are very popular and we start the preparation for wreaths in July.
Thanks for visiting, if you would like a chat about any of our products or have some ideas you would like to explore, please get in touch.
Grant & Gill