Workspace!

I will be the first to admit that I am spoiled when it comes to having a place to work on my craft projects.  In fact, it's sort of an embarassment of riches.  There are better and far more prolific artists than I out there who would give their eyeteeth to have my space.  Not only do I have a storage cabinet and a couple of spinning wheels in the den, and a couple more spinning wheels and a small loom in the living room, and a large loom in the guest room, but, in addition,  I have my own house.

When we bought this place 20+ years ago, it came with a small mother-in-law cottage, which Bob said I could have (I think he was tired of finding my natural dye experiment on the stove, aka "wool and weed stew" when what he wanted was dinner).  It has two rooms and a bathroom, and Bob walled in the back porch to make my dye kitchen (there was already a stove there, and he scrounged a great sink/counter).  The smaller room (about 10 x 11) is my sewing room, and the larger one is for storage, fiber prep, and general crafting.

With all this--of course I had to have a complaint  :-)

My cutting table in the sewing room is 30" wide.  I was trying to cut out a skirt for a 1900's costume--the fabric is 54" wide and the pattern pieces are about 40" wide, which made it tricky to lay it all out.  I could have used the dining room table--but that's the downside of having a studio away from the house--the cutting board, fabric, pins, measuring tape, and marking chalk would all have to be carried up and back.  It's only about 150 yards away--but I always forget something so it's multiple trips.

As I said--spoiled.

I was talking to Bob about it, and trying to figure out how to fit a wider cutting table into the sewing room.  He pointed out the obvious--the sewing room was rather packed full, but the front room was underutilized.  There was a work counter there, but only 20" wide.  Why not extend it?

So that was Saturday's project.  We got three lower cabinet units from Home Depot (which happened to be the same height as the original counter support), a piece of pressboard, and a piece of white masonite.  A few hours later and I have a 6.5 x 4 foot workspace--and storage!

Here's the old counter:

 

 

An here's the new one:

 

 

 

Here's the really clever part.   Notice that there's a pretty big gap (about 15") between the old counter and the new ones.  Bob put casters and a handle on a long board for me--and voila!  Secret storage (the tall wastebaskets are for storing fleece)

 





Which now begs the question--with this much storage space, what's going to be my excuse for having my stuff spread out all over the place??