Steve Cherrier

I’ve been talking about doing this for months — and finally I’m getting off my butt and making it happen! After renting a studio last year and spending a fair bit of money and aggravation on it, I decided that I’d love to have one of my own to use. I looked into renting a studio (way too expensive) or sharing via a studio co-op (still expensive and not as flexible). Then one day while thinking how I could make it happen at my house, I realized that I had a huge external garage/workshop outside that was literally just filled with storage items and junk. Mostly the latter too.

So after seeking approval from my lovely, talented and oh so understanding wife, I decided to turn it into a photography studio! So after a few weeks of cleanup and rearranging storage solutions in my house and internal garage, I finally got it all prepped and ready for the first phase of construction.

Above is an image of the garage as it looked right after I had finished cleaning it out yesterday (March 22, 2008) morning. On the right hand side we’re going to be putting in a standard door next week so that I don’t have to open the garage door continually to get in and out of the garage.

To see more of what we accomplished on day one of construction, hit the jump (read more)!

So post cleanup the garage looked like this (photos on the right). As you can see, the garage was already insulated and has an open ceiling. I decided that at least for the time being, we’ll leave the rafters bare, which will allow me to use them to recess any lighting that I might want to use high up, etc. We can always cover it over later if we get any “orange” spill off of light from the rafter colour. Also note that the garage has a large concrete base that goes up the wall all the way around, and I felt that would be prohibitive against the back wall — which would be my primary shooting wall. So the solution was to build a false wall in front of the back wall that would go floor to ceiling with gyproc (see below).

That’s my brother-in-law on the ladder. He’s the real brains behind the construction. I could never have done any of this without his help….either that or it would have cost me a fortune to get someone in to do this. I may be pretty smart when it comes to computers and the Internet, but I have such an appreciation for people who understand construction techniques and principals. I’m really a n00b when it comes to that!

Ok, back to the construction. Once we had the frame up and the vapour barrier in place, we proceeded to put the drywall up. As you can see below, we now have a ceiling-to-floor wall against the back so that when painted white, will enable me to use as a standard white background without any need for additional backdrop solutions. I have plans for seamless backdrops later though.

So we covered the walls in gyproc except for the far right corner near the garage door. This is where we’re going to put in a door next week. My brother-in-law, John, is coming back tomorrow or Tuesday to cut the concrete for the door, and my neighbour who is a renovation specialist, is going to cut and put in the door for me. So far the total cost has been about $350 for materials. I’m guessing another $200-$300 for the door implementation as well. Then I get to hit up another friend of the family who is a drywall specialist to make my walls perfectly smooth. Maybe if I offer him a lifetime supply of artistic nudes that I shoot against “his wall” he might go for it as payment. Either that or a bottomless cooler of beer sometimes helps!

To see the complete set of photos as I progress, visit my flickr site here.