My Home: Abigail Lane

A home and an office, this former factory floor has been transformed to suit this artist's grand, yet homely, ideals. Tessa Williams-Akoto reports

I never really see my place as a flat. Although it is homey, it is very much a workspace too. What I love most about it is the scale. In my previous flats, I only had to lunge for things - here I get the chance to take a walk from one side to another. I love the "big sky" feeling, being high up with so many huge windows.

There are more than 27 windows and I don't have any curtains apart from in my bedroom, where I have blackout blinds. I didn't want the feeling of being hemmed in by curtains, plus they would cost a fortune.

Before I moved to here, I had a place in Shoreditch in which I could both live and work, and where my love affair with big spaces began. It completely changed the way I lived my life. I was there for six years, before the area had anything.

I held some great parties there: two followed the Turner Prize, one for Sam [Taylor-Wood] and one for Gary [Hume].

However the area soon changed, rents started to rise and more and more artists had to leave . When I realised that I would have to move, I decided to walk east along the canal until something turned up. Eventually I stumbled along across a wasteland of largely redundant buildings. As it turned out there were already a few pioneers living there and leading an alternative, "halfway house" sort of existence. Now, I love the fact that this space is so close to the river.

When Ethel, my Staffordshire terrier and I moved in six years ago, we had to do just about everything from rewiring the electricity to constructing new walls, and putting in new plumbing. One of the most time-consuming tasks was scraping, burning, and sanding the bitumen from the floor to reveal the maplewood boards underneath. I had great help from a good friend of mine, Dean Whatmuff, who kept on top of the whole project, making sure things were being done on time, ordering materials and keeping people on the right track.

It took a long time to raise the money to renovate the place. I held an auction of my work and other artists and had a proper auctioneer from Sotheby's. I bought a lot of stuff secondhand and helped with whatever decorating we could do.

It took about two months to transform it from a leaking shell stuffed to the ceiling with rubbish into a pretty swanky space. I think I have made the most of what was here by revealing lots of original detail like tiles, reconstituting the industrial kitchen gear and fixing the floorboards.

The building was formerly a factory for Burberry, and my kitchen was their canteen, so there were many things to be moved.

My interior style is quite grand but homely, eclectic - and not at all flashy.

I had a gut-feeling about the corner I would like to sleep in, so that immediately became my bedroom.

From my bed, I can hear the birds singing and the river flowing.

I designed the "lightning" wallpaper behind my bed, and the venetian mirrored chest was a gift from another artist many years ago. Apart from that I don't have much else in my bedroom. I didn't want to look at my clothes, so I planned a walk-in dressing room.

I like cooking, so the heart of the house is the kitchen and all my sofas. I tend to relax at the kitchen table and eat with friends, or I lounge on one of the many sofas and read or watch TV. On Sundays, the surrounding industry is quiet and the whole place cools down, so its good day to chill out.

Space is the ultimate luxury and it means you can let furniture define the space. The bathroom is off the kitchen and has a huge free-standing bath, which I bought from Loot for £70. It had been left to rust in someone's garden. I painted it black. It looks really sharp now.

Furniture tends to find me. Since I have a big space, people give me things that no longer fit into their lives or homes. On my 30th birthday my friends bought me a surprise present of a Challen baby grand piano, which now lies in the hallway. My friends managed to lift it up the stairs and then presented it to me with a glass of champagne on the top and a book of It's a Wonderful Life. I don't tend to play it much, as I'm embarrassingly bad and the walls are too thin.

Since I started the furniture design company, Showroom Dummies, with Brigitte Stepputtis, who also works as the head of couture for Vivienne Westwood, and Bob Pain, a print specialist, the house is even more full of furniture. My place is our showroom and the heart of its creativity.

We've produced a perspex screen, which is my favourite piece. It shows the image of "kissing asses" on one side and falling parachutists on the other. For more sentimental reasons, I am also pretty fond of my kitchen table because of all the things that have taken place around it. I bought it many years ago from Castle Gibson.

The fact that I have a secret garden, a hermit's house and wild rocket, all a stone's throw from my home is very useful.

There is also a FedEx building, an industrial tyre-shredders, burnt-out caravans and now even an organic Turkish emporium, that all make this the truly Wild Wick. It's diversity and growing pains are what make the area exciting and unique.

www.showroomdummies.com