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Margaret Mitchell and her husband Doug Endsley knew when they saw the roomy ranch home in Terrell Hills that it was ideal for them and their 10-year-old son Zachary. They loved the quiet street, the yard with nine trees, the recently updated kitchen and even the existing paint colors.

But there was one thing that would make the home perfect: an additional space that could serve as both guesthouse and art studio.

Endsley, vice president of finance and technology at the University of the Incarnate Word, and Mitchell, a theater professor at the same university and a costume and stage designer, spent a year planning the 600-square-foot addition. Endsley sketched out the L-shaped design and Mitchell focused on the functionality of the space. Contractor Troy Jessee and architect Paul Franklin further mapped out the plan.

“We picked out the hardware before ground was even broken,” Mitchell says.

During that year of planning, they determined how the small space would convert back and forth from a self-contained guesthouse complete with a full kitchen and bathroom to Mitchell's art studio. While planning, they added one more identity to the space: a library to capture the book spillover from the rest of the home.

“This space has a lot of demands,” Mitchell says.

Design with feeling: When Margaret Mitchell designs a space, she homes in on the feeling she wants it to convey. The addition to her home allowed for construction of a new master bathroom, and the feeling she identified for that room was "calm." That idea guided decisions like choosing an oversize tub, hanging a shelf above the tub wide enough for a wine glass and candles, tiling the walls with green and blue glass and situating a wide unadorned window so that it looks onto an enclosed Zen garden.

Light with options: The addition is lit with a monorail track system, which allows lights to be adjusted for different tasks. The lighting there and in the new master bathroom was installed with dimmers to offer even more lighting choices.

Color with meaning: When it came time to choose a paint color for the library in her home's addition, she wanted to use the same burgundy color as the McNay Art Museum's library, which also was the same color Robert Tobin used in his personal home library. "Our painter went to the McNay, found the installer, found the painter and got the formula and matched it," Mitchell says.

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And since the addition was built off the master bedroom, as a bonus they included a new master bathroom and closet as part of the construction.

Design decisions were guided by the desire for the addition to fit in stylistically with the rest of the home. Distinguishing features of the 1950s-era ranch home include banks of windows, oak flooring and brick interior walls. All three of these elements carried over to the addition.

Despite its compact footprint, the space doesn't feel small. A tall, angled ceiling makes the space appear larger and a wall of windows looking onto the backyard and a limestone-flagged patio brings in natural light.

“Most of my life I've been working on the kitchen table,” Mitchell says. “I have a beautiful place to work for the first time in my life. “

When set up as a studio, Mitchell pulls a 1966 Richard Schultz porcelain-and-metal table from the patio into the space as a drafting table.

The back wall of the studio is paneled with cork, and Mitchell pins watercolor paintings and fabric swatches to the panels to visualize her costume designs. These same panels open up to reveal vertical and flat storage for art and shelves for linens.

When the space is converted for guests, the middle section of cork wall folds out into a queen-size Murphy bed. A leather couch in a nook doubles as another bed and a small built-in desk provides guests with workspace. Guests access their private kitchen and bathroom by walking through the library, a long slot transecting the addition that is lined with floor-to-ceiling adjustable shelving.

While the new addition is minimalist in its décor, the interior design connects back to the spirit of the main house. The original home is comfortably and eclectically decorated with heirlooms and art. The living room, for example, features a ragtime piano from the 1920s and furniture in an extra bedroom includes a bed that belonged to Mitchell's mother and a rocking chair that belonged to Endsley's father. Framed costume sketches line the walls.

This theme of comfort, family and art is present in the addition, apparent in the space's thoughtful versatility, in Mitchell's vibrant works-in-progress and in the library's collection of vintage books from Mitchell's and Endsley's families.

“It functions like we imagined it would,” Mitchell says.

Megan Stacy is a San Antonio freelance writer.