Sewing Nook Upgrade

When we renovated the house in 2018/19, an unexpected surprise was the addition of a sewing area for me near the laundry. I talk about it a lot in this post here. That little sewing area saw me through a stack of sewing in the last three years and worked amazingly as my change table for all the day care nappies that I changed. 

But it had failings. The sewing cabinet that I had (inherited from my Yia-yia) did indeed store both Sally the Sewing Machine, and Olivia the Overlocker (also inherited from my Yia-yia) as well as a bunch of sewing related supplies. All good. It was also on wheels and folded out to make lots of sewing space when I needed it. Also good. The down side was that when it was all folded up, I couldn't keep a chair underneath it. 

This wasn't a problem when I didn't have a sewing chair, but my parents graciously gifted me one for my birthday one year and I found myself storing it in the ironing cupboard and pretty much never using it. Oh well, right? Except that at Christmas, my parents also gifted me a dress form, and the moment I opened it up, all Steve could think was "Where will we put that?"

I was stoked with the dress form, especially given that only a week before Christmas I had asked both Steve and the girls to pin a bodice to fit me with mixed results (although, to be fair, also a great final dress), but I had to agree with Steve - "Where would it go?" The sewing nook, for all it's capabilities, was not generous with space by any means. 

We got home from all the Christmas festivities, dress form in tow, and I think Steve said that very night, "What if we got rid of the sewing cabinet and had a desk/bench set up instead?" The solution here was that the sewing chair could then be stored at the sewing bench, and the dress form could be stored in the cupboard. 

Not a bad solution. I had wanted a peg board and a hanging thread storage solution for a while, so this was a good nudge in that direction. I also negotiated another shelf to go at the top of what I already had for more storage, given that whatever was stored in the cabinet would now need a new home. 

We ummed and ahhed over how to make the desk/bench solution work - Steve researched options at Bunnings since we figured all we would need would be a slab of wood that would be mounted to the wall. While we thought about the options and how to make it work, I took Rachel to Bunnings myself one morning to buy some 6mm dowel to use in my creation of thread storage. 

All the other wood was stuff I found under the house. I just made what lengths I had work, knowing roughly the size I wanted it to be based on where I was going to hang it at the end. Then I got the tools out and put it together. Steve's brother (who is a handy kind of guy), despaired at my description of how I drilled the 45 degree angle holes for the dowels to go into, but I think given that it works, my method shouldn't matter too much right? 

I have to say I was delighted in the end result, because it was everything I had wanted and more. Coincidentally, we also happened to be going to Ikea that week after Christmas, and so I measured the space for the pegboard and was ready to buy. While we were there, we walked past the desk displays and discovered you could purchase a desktop that would fit the space pretty perfectly. 

We didn't overthink it. Initially I wanted the wooden look top, but they were out of stock, so I just cut my losses and we bought the white. I was thinking I'd rather it be done, than have to wait or go back to Ikea again. A day later and Steve had mounted it to the wall and repurposed a shelf from the study for my extra storage. Unbelievable; in less than a week, the makeover was complete. 

Here is an action shot of Steve getting that black shelf (leaning against the cupboard up onto the wall. You can see the bit of wood we attached to the wall at his legs. There is another one on the other side that the desk top rests on. The desk top is leaning against the cupboard too. You can also see my dress form there - already doing a great job of modelling a work in progress dress that I'll blog about soon. 

Funny story about mounting it to the wall though - we couldn't quite find the studs by tapping on the walls, and not wanting to risk the thing falling down (it was going to have a desk top and two sewing machines on it after all), started to think of other ways to mount it (vertical supports, desk legs etc). Suddenly I had a revelation that there must be studs there, and that we had a way to know where they were from all the photos and videos that I took when we were renovating and the walls were being built! 

We looked up the video, paused it as I panned passed the wall and there was the location of the studs. Brilliant. If you are ever renovating, document everything - you never know when it will be very useful. 

I got some new storage boxes and sorted through all of my sewing gear with Maria. We culled somethings, probably not as much as I expected, but in the end, everything fit and there was space to spare. Hooray! I switched out the curtains too, just for a change and I have been sewing happily ever since. 

In the big clean out, I also found the receipt for Olivia the Overlocker, from when my Yia-yia first bought it. Olivia celebrated her 30th birthday this year on the 24th of January. Happy Birthday Olivia! There is so much sewing potential here now and because the case numbers were up, it meant lots of time for sewing too. Time to use up the stash! 

PS sorry for the bad photos. The Sewing Nook is unbelievably hard to photograph. Best photos I could take were opening the laundry doors behind the sewing table and siting on the sink.