Today I’m going to let you in on a little secret. My current studio isn’t located in my house – it’s actually located in the old stone farmhouse I grew up in. (Which is about a mile from my current house.) And ever since I moved my studio to the farmhouse, I’ve been harboring a (sort of) secret dream – to fix up the house so that I can have small groups of artists and makers come stay for workshops and retreats.
Getting the space ready for retreats hasn’t been my primary goal, as I was more focused on my own studio (and then moving my own studio after experiencing flooding, which you can read about here). But all along, I’ve been saying that my goal was to get the house ready to host workshops by the time I’m forty. Well, that day is now less than eleven months away, and it occurred to me that if I was going to make it, I need to start making fixing up the house a priority. (I’m still not quite sure I’m going to make it, what with Covid making construction projects more difficult, but at least I’m going to try!)
I decided to start with some low hanging fruit – fixing up one of the spare bedrooms that mostly just needed cosmetic work! I gave the room a fresh coat of paint (a pale grey, though I went one shade darker in the alcove where the bed is and in the closet) and since I had already ripped up the old carpet, I painted the floor. (Because I love a good painted floor!)
After that it was just arranging furniture and styling! I already had all the furniture and bedding, the abstract paintings are mine and the landscape was pained by my mom, and I brought in a few existing plants (like that monstera that was taking over my bathroom). I couldn’t resist buying a few new plants to spruce up the room and I treated myself to an orb from Bella Joy Pottery (you can see a detail in the last pic) as a reward for getting the room done.
I still have some minor details to work on, like new window treatments (though who really needs those when you’re in the country?!?), finishing the closet, and doing a little more styling, but considering I did all of this in about a week, I’m pretty proud of how far the room has come!
Oh, and as far as those workshops and retreats go, I still don’t have a timeline (there’s a lot of work to do yet) but I am sure that the first people I’ll invite will be members of my online mentorship community, Artists and Profit Makers! (So if a fun art or art/business retreat in the Pennsylvania countryside sounds like something you’d be into, you may want to consider joining my group!)
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