With the exception of our signature red entry door, no other feature of our art studio has raised as many questions as the garage door we have separating our Studio A and Studio B (we really need to come up with better names). The comments about the garage door have ranged from “why do you have a garage door” to “this is so cool”.

Besides being very cool, garage door is also the most practical solution we could find.  From the very beginning we knew that we needed to make the space we have to be multi-purpose and to allow for several art lessons to be held at the same time. Renting a great space like our art studio is not cheap and our goal has been to make sure that the extra expense does not force us to increase the cost of classes. If we can amortize the cost across more activities we can keep the prices down. Our parents and students expect top notch art lessons at reasonable prices.

To accommodate multiple art classes running at the same time we need to have individual studios well divided and, most important, sound insulated. All of our walls have sound insulation and even our ventilation ducts are sound insulated. To reduce costs of art classes, we plan to use the art studio for corporate team building activities, social painting and special events like birthday parties, art exhibitions, receptions etc. that would demand the entire space we have be available.

To close our 18 foot span, we considered a number of alternatives. We had people engineer removable walls, accordion walls, sliding walls – you name a system, we considered it. All of them had a number of shortcomings. Some would look great but would be a huge undertaking to remove and put back in place, others would not provide sound insulation that we need, others would take away too much space. And all of them were murderously expensive defeating the purpose of the partitioned space – art classes at reasonable cost.

And then the idea popped up seemingly from nowhere. A sectional garage door that rolls up would provide us with a solid sound proof wall (foam filed core and weather striping really help). It rolls up out of the way on to the ceiling and the space can be converted from two studios to a single large venue and back in less than a minute with zero physical effort. We have a whisper quiet belt motor to raise and lower our separating wall in place. To ensure complete safety we have obstruction and pressure detection and operating placed high enough so kids would not be able to reach it. There are minor drawbacks. In the rolled up state the door does block a couple of work lights but these are not needed in the rolled up state anyway.

The biggest challenge was getting the door in to the studio. At over 17 feet in length there was no way to get the panels in to the building through the stairs. So, we had to take out a window and had a boom crane slide the door thought the opening. If you were at the studio on the first weekend you would have seen a piece of plywood covering the window that we had to take out. Kids quickly turned the plywood in to canvas and it soon became a communal work of art. 

And this is the story of our garage door in a second floor art studio. We went to great lengths to design the space so that we can offer the best possible experience for our art students and at the same time keep the cost of art lessons down. To make this a reality we do need to have art studio occupied as much as possible. If you know of anyone looking to hold a team building event, a birthday party or some other event or celebration please recommend us. Also, we are going to have social painting Friday evenings (at first). Social painting is a great way to spend the time by yourself or with a group of friends. These social painting outings have become popular for dates, girls night out etc. Hope to see you at one of the social painting evenings soon.