My Studio Transformation

Many of you may have been following my various posts on social media documenting the restyle of my garden studio. Well I’m finally ready to show you the results!

Setting up my studio

Once upon a time, 8 years ago... the thing is, as with most things, you have to start where you are. Originally my studio was built when I was pregnant with our youngest daughter 8 years ago - we were needing to create a bedroom in our loft and to create a storage space. We replaced the dilapidated ancient shed in the garden with a new structure and filled it will ‘stuff’.
4 years later my daughter started school and I started to work full-time as an artist - I cleared the space and set it up as a studio... Voila!

Now 4 years on from that, my art and business needs have changed. I’m working larger, I need a clearer space to work and a larger space to store finished art. I was looking into the idea of renting a 2nd studio for storage but after brainstorming with an artists community I’m a member of, I realised that there were creative ways to restyle what I already had and make it work better.

Working from home

A number of artists I know end up storing work in all sorts of nooks and crannies around their home - behind sofas, under beds, on the landing etc but these spaces were already taken in out house! My 1st solution was to use the corner of our largest bedroom and construct a purpose built storage unit.
I’m thrilled with this, it hasn’t made a big difference to the original room but has created lots of extra storage space that works perfectly for the largest of my canvases, getting them out of my studio!

Storage solutions

One of the many, many piles i need to deal with at some point!

In my studio itself I decided to create a false wall that I could use as a surface to work on and behind which could be hidden lots of wonderful storage space. So I set about clearing EVERYTHING out, ready for the work to begin. It was time for the old kitchen units to go, and time for a huge culling of all the things I had kept ‘just in case’ or ‘maybe one day’. These days I am much clearer on where my creative focus is and needed my studio space to reflect this.

Some things I found other homes for, but I have a MASSIVE pile of things for Ebay and another big pile of things for the rubbish dump (which I will gradually work my way through over the next few months!)

a blank canvas

Once empty the remodelling work could begin, then the whitewash (making it feel much lighter and more professional) and then the task of bringing things back and working out where to put it all.

Some useful extras

I’ve added a few new bits and pieces to help the space function better. I’ve put castor wheels on a unit, so it can be pulled in and out of the storage area, I’ve bought a cheap chest of drawers on wheels to store all my little bits and to double up as a moveable trolley for my paints and palette. I’ve bought some Ikea drawer inserts for my Expedit unit, I’ve turned one of these Expedit cubes into a filing cabinet by remodelling a free standing filing box from Amazon and I had a some brackets put into the ceiling to hold all my long rolled canvases and pieces of wood etc

The big reveal

And I videoed the whole thing, cos I knew you’d want to see it all happen! Here is a time-lapse of the transformation from my old art studio into my beautiful new one.

A little tour

And here is a little tour talking you through the space, the storage and the decisions I’ve made.

And now for the fun part - get in there and use it, and get it messy!