Room without a view: extend into a storage unit | Life & Style.

When we were preparing for our big trip out to Costa Rica, I spent a lot of time at our impressive storage unit in the suburbs of the suburbs of London. I would turn my Nokia N95 onto speaker mode and rock out while organizing and re-organizing the room in a perfect real-world 3D Tetris puzzle. I used to think “I wonder if anyone spends more than an hour at a time here?”

The answer – they do! People all over London are using storage units as dance studios, piano recital rooms, and all sorts of other things. I wish I was cool enough to think about this first. You can easily rent a unit with enough room for an upright piano and a bench for about £50 a month.

Compare £50 a month to the price of renting a studio room (with piano) in Central London: it’s £17 an hour. Even with a volume discount, 20 hours of practice a month for 5 months will cost you more than the price of a decent used piano to stick in your storage unit.

Which storage unit brand will be the first to:

a) promote their spaces as practice space as well as storage space?

b) provide low cost DIY sound proofing solutions to make the pianos sound great?

c) provide electricity and wi-fi for home workers who want to do quiet teleconferences away from the kids?

If you see such an ad, let me know! With this in mind I might be able to get a Steinway grand piano earlier than expected.