Studio Update

Over the holidays, the studio got an update!

First change - removing the wallpaper, which can be seen peeking out from between the quilts on the walls.

Dating from the early 90's, it was time for it to go. Fortunately, with only 3 half walls to do, it only required a day to remove/clean, another day for paint primer, and one more day for the final paint. After much debate, we chose Behr's Minimalistic, a cool white, for the top portion of the wall and left the green on the bottom. 

I also gave a new home to our old torchiere light, which helps increase the light on the quilt frame. Notice that none of the quilts have returned to the wall? 

At the moment, I plan to keep it that way, because the room has an uncluttered feel, like a blank slate for new creative ideas.

Continuing around the room, the next area up for reorganization was the storage in the corner. 

This area drove me nuts, with makeshift shelving of 2x4's and flat boards, plus a lot of stuff piled on the top and on the floor. In the circled area in front of the drawer unit, you can just barely see the home of my collection of Glide thread in various sized bins. 

Not only did it take of precious floor space, but it made for an awful view down the hall from the living room. In my eagerness to get to work on the redo, I forgot to take a picture of that scene! Anyway, that corner was just ugly.

After spending a few weeks shopping for storage, I decided on Ikea's Stuva system, which is part of their kid's collection of furniture but perfect for what I want. I decided on one tall unit, around 75", which has a cabinet on top, and next to it, the shorter, 50" unit, all full of drawers. 

These are both bolted to the wall, because with this height, tipping over would be disastrous. Having the shorter unit doesn't overwhelm the space, and it could serve as a counter, though I've made a pledge not to dump stuff there. And the view from the door/hall/living room? Awesome and uncluttered!

The best part about these units? The thread storage bins fit side by side in the cabinet.

With the purchase of a few more bins, my thread is now organized by color family, and behind closed doors free of dust and sunlight. Having the thread up there makes me incredibly happy, even more so than all the awesome fabric storage!

The last area and the most challenging, is the cutting table, which sits perpendicular to my sewing table. Here's the old,

and the new. 

Yup, all that's changed is the wallpaper to paint, and only the cork board comes back to the wall.

Why no big change? Well, there's a few issues. The cutting table is a 6' folding table, with plastic storage units underneath. There's at least 8" of unusable space underneath because of the brackets of the table, which I'd love to take better advantage of, along with the space on the right that's hidden by the sewing table.

Hubby's idea was a kitchen cabinet of drawers on the left, and a shelf unit on the right. But I'm not too happy about that because the permanency of low cabinets bolted to the wall, and the difficulty of getting to the storage on the right because of the sewing table legs. Plus, we'd have to manufacture a top, as my search for a pre-made one that's 30" x 72" has come up blank. Ikea, why can't you make one that size???

So, for now I'm going to leave the area as it is, with changes of what's stored there. That's the 'don't use often' spot that everyone has somewhere in their house. And it's still somewhat accessible, even though I have to contort myself to get back there.

Overall, I'm very happy with the changes, especially those Ikea Stuva cabinets which make everything nice and neat. Thank you for coming on my studio update tour - now I need to get to creating!

Happy Quilting!

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