Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Redesigning my workspace (again)

So, despite my mother's WONDERFUL assistance in February at getting my studio re-arranged, I'm once again finding shortcomings in the layout. Short of begging Ty Pennington to come make over my studio, I'm stumped!!

My space is 11.5 ft x 12.5 ft, with a truncated corner making the remaining 2 walls ~7.5 ft & 9 ft. Once you account for the doors, that removes another 2 ft of useable space on those walls. Right now, my doors do not open fully, because of a storage shelf and my work table.

The big space hog is my quilt frame, at 3 ft x 10.5 ft (and she's a *small* one!!). The other is my work table, which is ~ 3.5 ft x 6 ft, but I'm considering how best to combine it with my sewing table/desk into an L-shape, to go against the shortest wall & stick out into the room. This could work, as long as I can get storage behind the desk on the remainder of the 12.5 ft wall. I've got high ceilings I'd love to take advantage of, but hubby doesn't like me on ladders... (I have balance issues). The remainder of the 9 ft wall will be my design wall.

If I do things right (ie have a master carpenter build it all for me! LOL), then I will have storage under my desk & work table. My biggest worry is if I lower my work table to being the height of my desk, then it won't be the right height for cutting. I can always put shelves on the wall above the work space to hold the printers, scanners & other large/bulky items that I need accessible but don't want taking up valuable real estate. Putting my frame in front of my window, I re-open that 12 ft of wall space that I currently can't use, due to the placement of the pantograph shelf (the size of the frame & orientation of the shelf make it impossible to reach the wall behind).

Hm, maybe I'm reaching a potential solution!