My Sewing and Craft Studio...

When we bought our house one of the things that sold us on it was that there was room for both of us to have our own workspaces...  Paul was thrilled to finally have a garage and to have one that's oversized and even has heat has been great for when he wants to work on his car in the middle of a New England winter.  My space is going to be a room in our partially finished basement that's just off the family room.  It's going to be great when LP is old enough to play in the family room while I work on projects in my sewing room- I'll still be able to keep an eye on him!

When we first saw the house the room looked like this:

The stairs come down from the hallway off the kitchen into the family room.  We've stripped the lovely wallpaper and painted everything a light buttery yellow.  The carpet is the next thing to tackle as it desperately needs to be replaced!  There's now a huge t.v. in that corner where the armchair is and our sectional is against the back wall.  The door at the bottom of the stairs goes into my studio and you go through that room to get to the unfinished part of the basement and the laundry. 

The "studio" from right to left as you walk through the door:

Electrical box in the corner, the previous owners stuff (do you think they had enough toys for their kids??)


Door on the left goes into the laundry/even more unfinished part of the basement)

The other side of the room- the mirrored door is the door that goes out into the family room.

Currently this room looks about the same, except that it's full of our junk instead of the previous owners.  Since we have 3 bedrooms I've been using the 3rd bedroom as my sewing room.  This is my current sewing room (although it's a bit more crowded now as the spare bed that was in the nursery is now in that corner where my sewing machine was:

And don't get me wrong, it's been wonderful having an entire bedroom dedicated to my sewing and crafting stuff but aesthetically it's not exactly how I'd like.  The coral reef wallpaper border just doesn't do it for me (but won't that dormer window be so cute with a window seat and bookshelves underneath and an adorable girly canopy window shade with curtains that you can pull closed around you like a big canopy bed and curl up with a great book???  Oooh and corally pink walls!  I have big plans for this room!)

The original plan was that we'd finish off this basement space when we need the 3rd bedroom for baby #2 (and no, don't get excited- I don't have any announcement to make about that!), however when I was down in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago Paul decided to start work on my studio.  His new plan is to get it done for me this fall!  Yay I'm a lucky girl!  So far he's roughed in closet which will go in the corner where the electric box is.  It's large enough that we can stick a vacuum cleaner and the ironing board in there.  We need to finish off the closet, install a drop ceiling and do something with the floor (most likely vinyl tiles of some sort).  We'll install a door between the sewing room and the unfinished part of the basement and paint the walls.  I get to customize it exactly the way I like, although we're doing it on a budget of course so I've been a bit obsessed with planning lately.

Here's the floor plan I'm going with so far (although if we can afford it we'll do an L-shaped counter along the back wall).

I need to use moveable furniture on the wall closest to the family room in case we ever need to move anything large in or out of the basement (for example the couch in our family room had to be taken apart and brought in through the bulkhead door into the basement in order to get it in there- and it was a TIGHT fit!).  I'm planning a wall of cabinets and shelves and a nice counterop on the back wall as I like to stand when I'm cutting fabric or doing other projects.  I already have a nice desk for my sewing machine so that will make the trip down to the basement studio.  I'd like a large cabinet or shelving system to store all of my fabric in.  And I'd like a pegboard on the wall that's immediately to the right when you walk in to hang tools on, etc.

Here are some other mockups (thanks to the Ikea Homeplanner software!):

I'm hoping to keep the room as bright and airy feeling as I can by planning for all of my supplies to be hidden away or in organized boxes on shelves.  I'm thinking of doing light colored walls and white cabinets and then adding splashes of robin's egg blue, orange, black and grey.  I'm going to use metal flashing as a backsplash or on the wall by the counter to use as a magnet board.  

Here's an inspiration board I've done using Kaboodle (a great site to use to keep track of wishlists- I have separate ones for myself, both Pauls, gift ideas, and my craft room):

My Craft Room... by emskyrooney

I can't wait for this room to come together.  Before I met Paul I always lived with more modern things around me, my furniture was on the mid-century modern side of things and I used brighter and bolder colors and funkier accents.  Fortunately I'm one of those people who can happily live with several different design styles and I've been lucky that Paul and I have been able to agree on the sort of updated country casual traditional type look we have going in this house.  But my sewing room is MINE and I get to do whatever I want with it so I'm going to go back to my previous slightly more modern, slightly more artsy style!

Whee I'm so excited!!!