Not sure if anybody is really interested, but thought I would post a little about building our studio. By the way, please excuse the photos. They were taken with an old iPhone.
The studio is for working with glass, as in glass fusing, glass slumping and glass draping. It is also a work area for Ann working with silver, copper and other metals. She has another area in the house for more assembly work to do with jewellery and other crafts.
The studio has been created by stealing some space from the ample garage space under our house. In front of the cars there was enough space for the studio, but it had to be divided by a wall to keep the area reasonably clean. As you can see from the photos it was not a nice place to be, so needed a good clean up and a coat of paint.
We were going to paint the floor as well, but after inspection decided that restoration of the floor was a huge job and not really worth the effort.
A small part of the area was already divided off with a pegboard wall, but it simply wasn’t large enough. So first thing I had to do was dismantle and move most of that wall to give us more space. I did leave a small section of that wall to create a barrier between Ann’s work benches and the kiln area.
A concern about ventilation and light caused us to decide on a set of windows in the wall near Ann’s working area. As she works with a gas torch and a few chemicals it was essential that we get some air through the space. Natural light would also be a great advantage, though this was always going to be a problem with building under the house. There are simply no big windows or doors.
A important consideration in our layout decision was the kiln. It had to have enough room so it was well away from walls, and so that in future we may be able to add a larger kiln. We decided to leave a small wall as a divider to create the sense of a separate area. This worked well and allowed us to put some shelves on the wall, as well as pegboard on one side for hanging tools etc.
The materials we used were primarily recycled. Left overs from building a previous home, windows and door scavenged from old buildings, pegboard reused from the existing wall, paint left over from painting the house and so on. Overall cost was low and using recycled materials just felt right.
We are very happy with the finished result, though we are sure it will change over time. We will keep you updated as the studio evolves.
You can see the finished result better in this post here.