Renovate! (or How I cleaned up 2/3 of my studio)

This past week I started to clean up my studio - I had let it get messy, so messy I could no longer move around easily to paint - aargh.

Now, if you're like most artists, much of the furniture in the studio has been re-purposed, and you've spent your money on easels, paints, and tools.  That's exactly how my studio was, and how parts of it still are.  But something had to be done, and while sitting in my computer room looking at my shelves of Cd's and DVDs it hit me - IKEA!

My new storage shelves
(click to enlarge )

Now I had a perfectly good utilitarian grey plastic storage unit - 5ft tall, 30 inches deep, 3 shelves - but it was too deep. I never could find what I was looking for because there were 30 bottles of mediums on each shelf (or so it seemed to me).

The tall skinny Ikea CD units, on the other hand, are about 8 inches wide, 6 inches deep, about 7 feet tall, and with many adjustable shelves.  I could separate my mediums, they fit 2 deep (so are easy to find), and all my brushes and palette knives are right there!

I bought 3, my son gave me a fourth, and my 6 year old grandson Jade and I built the shelves and installed them in about 3 hours.  Heaven!

new tables and paper drawer
(click to enlarge)

Then I bought 2 tables - well, in Ikea speak 2 tabletops (24x40 inches each) and 8 legs - cost of each table = $29!  Placed so they form an L, on one table I now have a perennially clean surface to draw on, and on the other table space for my pencils, charcoal, erasers, and my Icarus drawing board.

And bonus - my old Ikea paper drawer fits perfectly underneath one table!

I am in heaven.  I now have room to walk around, room to stand at my 2 easels, to step back about 5 ft when I need to, or sit at my drafting table.

Now for the final 1/3 of my studio - where the reference bookshelves are, and the canvas storage - it's behind the tables (so I don't see it when I'm painting, smart move eh?) - but I'll work on that next month.


It was a good weekend - I'm itching to start painting again.

TTFN
Terry