Kathy “Kat” and Brian Mast like to collect things. For Kat, it’s rocks. She uses stones (some whole and some chiseled into mosaic tesserae) alongside other found materials, such as dried cacti foraged during hikes and scraps from construction sites (painted metal, vintage nails) to make art. Brian, an engineer turned builder, upcycles discarded and leftover materials into housing projects.

The husband’s and wife’s passions combined when they downsized from Hayward, Wisconsin, to Salida, a small Colorado town that sits along the Arkansas River. Most rental houses in the area are historic (read: small) and less than ideal for an artist in need of space, so the Masts decided to build Kat an art studio on wheels, or, more specifically, on a flatbed trailer.

For the design, they turned to their daughter, architect Andrea Ostman, co-owner of Follow Architecture in Boulder. Ostman imagined a blend of rustic and modern, whimsical and practical—a covered wagon befitting a traveling artist. “You want it to match the identity of her art,” Ostman explains. “What’s something that’s kind of different, that’ll stand out, that speaks to a unique artist vibe?”

There were a few parameters on the project: It needed to be mobile, function as a workspace, and incorporate as many of Brian’s leftover materials as possible—for the cost savings and sustainability, but also because it suited Kat’s artistic ethos. While Ostman originally envisioned an exterior clad lengthwise in cedar with black steel siding on the ends, she realized that the wood would degrade too quickly on the roof. So she switched materials, wrapping the long sides and curved roof in a continuous sheet of corrugated Cor-Ten steel and limiting cedar to the short walls.

$2,400 Trailer	$2,300 Framing Materials	$450 Electrical
$380 Light Fixtures	$250 Flooring	$400 Insulation
$1,150 Walls & Shelves	$700 Paint	$1,580 Roofing & Corr. Steel
$2,600 Windows
Grand Total: $12,210

In the end, about one-quarter of the materials were salvaged. “What we had spurred a different inspiration for the project,” Brian explains. The workbench is built from a century-old Douglas fir beam from an old warehouse, and the cedar siding is from a cabin in Wisconsin. To enhance the contrast between the timber and the metal, Ostman turned to the Japanese yakisugi technique, in which cedar planks are burned and oiled.

The studio’s minimalist, wood-clad interior had to provide enough desk and floor space for Kat to hammer at her raw materials and easily store and see her collection for inspiration. One entire wall of the 118-square-foot space contains built-in shelves stacked with mason jars of materials organized by type and color. The other side is taken up primarily by the workbench. Furnishings are limited to an Ikea swivel chair.

“The rounded shape lends itself to corrugated metal because it bends in that direction anyway, so the choice of material reinforces the concept.”
—Andrea Ostman, architect

Thanks to the family’s design-build expertise, the Masts’ $12,200 out-of-pocket expenses were less than a third of what the project would have cost otherwise. They saved approximately $25,000 in labor and design costs and another $4,350 by using discarded materials.

“It’s my own happy place,” Kat says of the finished studio, which has already provided ample inspiration. “My art has changed since I’ve been in there. It has become more refined.… It just matches—it feels right.”

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Follow Architecture / @follow_architecture

Builder: Mast Construction

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Budget Breakdown: A Colorado Family Builds a Tiny Mobile Art Studio for $12K