Building a studio on the cheap

I’m sure this story will sound very familiar to lot of people who have young family. You have a hobby—let’s say for example it’s music-making, or DJing—and you have various pieces of equipment and it gives you a real sense of enjoyment. An outlet for your creativity. But then something in your life changes: kids come along! Suddenly you find yourself very short of time and, thanks to the inevitability of children’s toys and everything else, limited space for all of these gadgets. For some people, this may mean having to sell. For other others, these items invariably end up stashed away in the loft, or gathering dust in the corner of a garage. However, they don’t necessarily need to gather dust in the corner of a garage, instead that corner might just be the perfect spot for a very DIY studio space!

Having previously built a den in the garden primarily out of wooden palettes, I realised that there was a quick-and-dirty way for me to create an enclosed space in my garage such that I could find a spot for my various bits of music equipment, turntables, and my somewhat smaller record collection (yes, that is one thing that has slimmed down over the years, unlike my good self!). So I set about clearing away one corner of garage, and then very quickly built a wall out of palettes.

Clearing out a space in the corner of the garage.

Starting to build a wall out of palettes.

It’s very quick to create a wall with palettes, and they largely hold themselves up.

A raised chipboard floor (which later had laminate boards added).

A mancave with electronic gadgets in needs to be lockable! So here’s a proper door to prevent small people coming in and messing with things.

The intention here was never to make this a 100% permanent structure. As such, any electrical points are simply run from an extension cable, and the palette walls (which are covered in plasterboard) would be very easy to remove to return this back to a working and open garage space if needed. That said, when I am sat inside this space, with my all music equipment nearby, it certainly feels like a proper room, albeit one that gets quite cold in the winter!

Construction-wise, inside it is simply an L-shaped desk which I set up so that I knew it would accommodate turntables and mixer on one side, and a mixture of musical instruments and computer on the other side.

Working out dimensions needed for desk space by laying down bits of kit on the floor.

The desk build begins.

I did, however, soon realise that the desk space would be reasonably limited for music equipment, so I also created a custom tiered and angle shelf unit. That, too, will run out of space too, so I need to refrain from buying more toys!

An almost-finished setup. There’s even a Billy Bass on the wall!

Top-down view of the studio.

So that’s my studio-on-the-cheap. It’s my little man cave, and in the summer it is literally, and figuratively, the coolest place in the house (my wife’s opinion on this may differ, mind).