Construction is finally underway to renovate our walk-in attic space and area over our garage to what I am calling the studio wing. We will have a living area/guest room, including kitchenette and full bath, and a studio. All together, it's somewhere around 1100 sq. ft.
We are also doing a bit of work on what we call the game room. This is a large L-shaped room upstairs. My studio inhabited the small, lower part of the L. I say inhabited—past tense— because I had to clear it out this last weekend. I am currently without studio.
The footprint of our house is basically L-shaped. The bottom of the L is the 4-car garage and the very east end of the house. The renovation area is in the bottom of L—the area above the garage and the walk-in attic above the east end of the house. I'll try to blog the progress of the construction of the studio wing as we go along. So, let's get started!
Below are some pre-construction exterior photos:
East side of the house. The lower right shows the first garage door of the 4-car garage. There will be a shed—a dormer-like addition—over the first garage to accommodate the kitchenette and bath. The window that you see is in the walk-in attic space, which will be the living area/guest room.
North end of the garage. That window will be the entrance to my new studio. There will be a sliding glass door where the window is now, and a nice deck with stairs down to the ground level.
West side of the garage. This is the back of the garage. There will be a 12' x 6' dormer in the middle-ish of the garage roof, basically the middle of the studio area. This will really help open up the 34' x 12' shoebox of a studio.
Here is what the interior looks like pre-contruction:
Sorry for the blur. This is from just past the middle of our upstairs hall, looking toward the east. On the left is a door into a bedroom, which will be a casualty of our renovation. We'll be talking out about the eastern half of the room to open up that end of the hallway. The remaining half will be the new linen and storage closet. We'll also add a skylight. Directly ahead is the open door into the attic space over the east end of the house. If you turn the corner and go left, instead of into the attic, there is a linen closet—another casualty— right next to the attic doorway. Then, after the linen closet, there is the back stairway that leads down into the laundry room.
Here, I have walked into the attic and turned to the left, looking north into the area above the 4-car garage. At the end is that window that will be a sliding glass door leading out to the deck. The area from about the end of those vents on the left, to the window at the end of the garage, will be my new studio. On the left, there will be the 12' x 6' dormer. On the right, there will be 3 skylights in the angled roof. The kitchen and bath will be on the right, across from the vents. I'm taking this pic from what will be the living area, and there will be french doors between the living area and the studio.
Since these pics, it's gotten noisy and dusty and crazy—and exciting—around here. I'll be back shortly!