A New Sewing Space

 

Now, it’s time to finally share with you my new sewing space. I am very fortunate to be able to go from a sewing room to a sewing studio that includes two rooms and more space for creating and sewing and quilting. Making this big move was one of the main goals of my first year of retirement.

 

For the past 10 years, my daughter’s old bedroom has been my sewing room (prior to that it was our tiny bedroom under the eaves). Needless to say, I had a very “cozy” sewing room with lots of stuff everywhere. For the a few years now, I’ve been wanting to expand my sewing room, taking over a small TV room over the garage and expanding the room with an addition to the house. But that’s an expensive idea! 

One of my friends – Joanie – visited one day and I showed her the upstairs TV room and told her what I wanted to do. She looked at that tiny bedroom under the eaves that is adjacent to the TV room (and that was my first sewing room) and said “Why don’t you add this room to your sewing space? The two rooms together would be just what you need.

That started the ideas churning. We have a huge family room downstairs that has been pretty much dormant since the kids grew up and moved out on their own. Losing the small TV room upstairs would mean that we would use the family room once again. We started making plans for some new furniture. But the biggest holdback was the upstairs flooring. If we were moving all these things around upstairs, it would make sense to replace our old, worn carpet before putting things back in place. My dream was to have hardwood flooring in my new sewing space. But, even better, would be to put hardwood throughout the upstairs. But do you know how expensive that is? I was thinking $25,000 to $30,000. But quotes came in at around $45,000! Just to do a staircase was quoted at $6,000, and we have two of them! A search online told me that a staircase should cost between $70 and $200 a step, which comes to upwards of $3,000 a staircase. But when I asked a contractor about the discrepancy, he stood by his higher price.

Enter my brother. Scott is a very hard worker and does construction projects on the side along with working fulltime for a car manufacturer. He was willing to lead the effort in laying hardwood in my new sewing studio. We scheduled the installation. My husband Boyd and I moved all the furniture out and I stripped wallpaper and painted the main area. The two of us also removed the carpet and Boyd really enjoyed throwing pieces of it out the window down to the driveway. We also laid the vapor barrier. Then, my brother arrived and over three days we got most of it done. 

I learned a lot about putting down hardwood and actually laid flooring in the hallway entrance and in the tiny bedroom’s alcove. Boyd cut our quarter round trim for the base boards, worked in the corners of the tiny bedroom room to finish the flooring and cut all the little pieces I needed as we finished the job. It went so well that my husband and I are planning on laying more of the flooring in our upstairs (more on that later).

Finally, it was time to move in! Boy, was everything a mess. We started with the big pieces – an antique dresser serving as my TV console, my cutting table (which had to actually be taken apart to get it out of the old sewing room) and my sewing table. Everything else started to fall into place and the end result is beyond my expectations!

Here are photos of the main sewing area:

Here are photos of the tiny bedroom, which is now mostly a storage area for my quilting stash. It also includes my computer desk, and my midarm quilting machine in a cabinet that can be rolled out of the alcove and opened up in the tiny bedroom when I need it for machine quilting.

We still have a few things to do, including putting flooring in the tiny bedroom’s very narrow closet. I plan on taking out the hanging shelving and putting in a couple of deep shelves that extend into the closet’s far end. And the old sewing room is still a mess as we store things there until we get the rest of the flooring done. Eventually, it will transition to a guest bedroom that my daughter and her husband will enjoy during visits. My son’s old bedroom is now an excellent guest room with lots of space because the storage cubbies that I kept in that room are now in my sewing space. The plan is to have the flooring project complete by November so that we can enjoy our new floors during the Christmas season.

The big lesson from all of this is that you can do these kinds of things on your own. All you need is desire and energy, a willingness to get dirty and deal with sore muscles, and a bit of guidance either from a relative or friend, or from DIY sites on the Internet. We have already saved ourselves a ton of money, which means we can do even more home improvements or go on an expensive trip somewhere when all this is done.

I love my new sewing studio! It makes the whole house feel brand new. I just admire everything about it and look forward to spending the next 10 years using this new space. 

Hugs and Hope-

Kari