I am Jane, a working Mum, whose husband is never at home!

Juggling, bringing up two children, along with the dogs, the cats, the chicken, the fish and, at one point, Guinea pig’s too- has always been a challenge alongside work. I have always managed to fit in Primary School Teaching, but in 2018 after a number of job changes and as my children’s needs changed even more as they got older, I decided to follow my dreams and my hobbies…

Always loving animals I did what I had always wanted to do (work with animals not people) I started my own Pet Care business- Braw Pets and alongside this (when there were no dogs to walk, housework to do, children to taxi and it was raining outside- that happens a lot I live in Scotland !) I found time to paint…

After having a Multi Fuel Stove installed in our house, I couldn’t find anything I liked to hold the coal and wood. Everything was either baskets made of cane, that all the dirt leaked through! Or made of metal, which was less messy and robust, but all the ones I could find to buy were either expensive and plain or just plain ugly! So, I decided to paint an old metal galvanised bucket in colours that matched my living room. 

A friend visited and asked me to paint one for her room…

Another friend asked me sell some buckets at a Christmas Craft Fayre she was organising…

People liked the buckets! People started to order and buy the buckets for all sorts of uses! People wanted buckets of all different sizes! People liked matching buckets and vases and jugs!  

And so Braw Buckets Began.

And continued… 

In the winter of 2019 storm Dennis hit our garden! The old Forge Barn at the end of the garden, that had lain unused (apart from as a dumping ground for all the previous occupants of our house!)  for over eighty years, had its gable end blown down, as well as half of the roof! We had to make a choice – spend money we really couldn’t afford on replacing the wall and putting on a new roof, or do nothing and let the whole building fall down! With much soul searching, despite the cost, we felt we couldn’t let that happen and so we got the work done. At the same time, it made sense, to have electricity installed, after all, if it was to be used by anyone in the future, they would have to at least be able to see inside! (The last time it had been used for anything other than a dump was by candle light!) 

That was how it was left, we had no money or the time to complete the project- it was still filled with rubbish, years of dirt and grime, the inside walls were still crumbling and the floor unusable!  

Then in March 2020 came…. LOCKDOWN!

No work, no children to take to their numerous clubs, sports and activities! ISOLATION! But, NOT for me in the house with two teenagers, who did NOT want their Mum to be the one to Home School them (‘we are old enough to do it ourselves and we know more than you anyway’)! When I wasn’t walking the dogs in my exercise period for the day, or gardening, or shopping (once a week for me and a bit for the isolating neighbours), I was in The Barn. Amazing what you can learn to do when you have little money and no workmen to ask to come and do something for you! Along with my very patient husband (when he  made it home at weekends), we re -built and grouted walls, put up insulation, laid steps, replaced the windows, painted beams, added guttering, filled in holes in the floor and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned out hundreds of years’ worth of dirt!

After eight weeks, it was not perfect, but it was dust free (apart from a few spiders that didn’t want to leave!) I moved my paints in from the spare room and all the Buckets from the Garden Shed (and all the other places that they were stored in all around the house!)

It seems very fitting that galvanised metal buckets are now hand painted and made into something with care and love, beside the old Forge of the agricultural blacksmith that worked with his hands on metal in The Barn over one hundred and twenty years ago! I feel he would be very happy to know his workshop is being used again….

For Braw Buckets!