Hey friends! I'm excited to finally share with you the details of our garage remodel!
This was my old studio which used to be the laundry room / master bedroom closet. Literally our clothes are behind the curtain! In the beginning this room more than met my needs because I only had a small line of cards & prints. But as we grew the shipping station eventually spilled out into our bedroom, storage bins overtook the garage, and we even had to annex part of our daughter's bedroom to keep it all under one roof! After a few years of increasingly blurred lines between home and work, we realized that we needed to untangle our work space from our living space and reclaim our dining room table.
We considered several options for a new art studio: renting a space outside our home, building a studio on our property, adding a room onto our home. In the end we decided to go with the most economical option, which was remodeling our 2.5 car garage. And I'm so glad we did because the pandemic hit right as we began the remodel and that further constrained our budget. 
I cannot stress to you how much crap lived in our garage! The biggest undertaking was to examine every box and bin and decide,"does this bring us joy?" Alas, a lot of it did not, and so much of it was donated or given away. It's amazing what you're willing to part with when a brand new studio is within your sights! We also built a small shed on our property to store things we wanted to keep like BBQ supplies, camping gear and our kayak.
My husband Bert did all of the demolition work, removing the interior room and all of the cabinetry. Then we had the walls insulated and the drywall finished and textured before painting them.
Keeping the laundry area in the garage posed a minor design challenge, how to keep that space functionally separate. Our solution isn't perfect, but it's esthetically agreeable and highly workable. We essentially decided to surround the laundry area with metal bookshelves for extra storage, and use a room divider for visual separation.
The one thing I knew from the beginning was that I wanted a glass garage door to bring in tons of natural light. Since our home does not face the street, we now have a view of the driveway surrounded by forest. Parking our cars on another part of our property allows us to use the driveway as a patio area.
Our home is surrounded by tall trees that filter the sunlight throughout the day. So in the spring I relied on a small space heater to help warm the chillier mornings. The studio stayed pretty comfortable throughout the summer, despite the afternoon heat, helped by the concrete floors, insulated walls, and tree shade. As I tend to do most of my work early in the day, the warmer afternoons were never an issue, anyway. Now, it's almost October so we'll see how we do this winter!
Major expenses:
- Drywall- $3500
- Insulation $2000
- Garage Door $4800
Furnishings:
Sundance Console (similar to this one)
Pole to hang outdoor string lights
Ikea storage and filing cabinets
Before:
These are great ideas. I have a similar space and love the wash of natural light the big garage offers. I plan on incorporating your ideas for space division. Thanks for sharing this.
How did the winter work? Did you need more than a space heater?
———
Little Truths Studio replied:
Having a small space heater worked really well all winter as well as leaving the door from the garage to the house open in the winter months. Three walls were insulated which helped. Insulating the ceiling would have helped even more but we did fine without it. All in all we were happy with the result year round.
Leave a comment