The Woman of 1,000 Hobbies

Before

You can see some additional ‘before’ pictures at my old sewing roompage.

In the picture below you can see a picture of one end of the room and a close-up of the room floor. It had this fantastically ugly vinyl tile that I believe dated from the 60′s. It was hideous. About half the floor was covered with an ancient blue/gray industrial carpet that was showing canvas in some spots. Basically a depressing scenario.

During

Here is my husband installing a new door. There was quite a lot of rot around the old one and the sill had to be rebuilt. Notice the black mold in the right corner. We had a yard-runnoff drainage problem fixed a few years back, so this shouldn’t happen again.

Here he proudly displays the new door. It has in-window blinds, which I love.

Below is a picture of the room in general disarray. This is after we peeled up the vinyl tiles and had moved out most of the stuff.

These are the colors I’m using in the new room. Behr has a nice selection of color combinations. I was tending towards painting the walls gray, and this “Smoked Oyster” is a really pleasant lavendery-gray. We used Popped Corn for the trim as show in the picture.

Here’s the room after painting, but before the new floor was put in.

We’re installing wood-pattern sheet vinyl in the room. Its quicker and cheaper than wood, and vinyl is a good choice for sewing rooms. I thought everyone would get a kick out of my vinyl-installation method. I use paper and packing tape to make a pattern of the floor. I used about 250 feet of paper. Its great because I can make (and repair) mistakes on the pattern long before the vinyl gets cut. Once I have a perfect pattern, down to the details around the door molding, I lay the pattern on the vinyl and cut it out using a fresh craft knife. I’m cutting it on the driveway as its the only flat spot large enough for the 12×22 foot sheet.

Here’s a shot of the room after the vinyl is installed. This shot shows a fairly accurate view of the paint color (at least on my monitor it does). It looks more lavender in some lights and more grayish in others.

I thought I’d show close-ups of the changes in the “moldy corner”.
Here’s before (but after we ripped the old flooring out).	Here’s after its all complete. Looks pretty gorgeous to me.

After

These following two pictures show the view to the right as you enter the room from the kitchen. This is where my built-in work surface and storage will go. I won’t normally have computers here. The room is definitely not together yet. At this point I am still moving things back in, and my husband has not yet built my work surface and shelving.

The rendering below shows the view to the right as it will look when complete. The built-in L-shaped cutting and activity center that my husband is going to build. The far wall has a 40″ deep surface that extends the full width of that wall (roughly 9.5 feet). I’ll have a my 72″ x 40″ cutting mat there, which I’ve represented with a stretched out chess board in the simulation. Hey, what can I say they didn’t have a cutting board object in Home Architect. The table will wrap around the wall to the right, where the surface will only be 20″ deep. The whole area will have wall shelves or cabinets above the surface. My sewing machine and serger tables will be in another L shape completing my “sewing cube”.

Here’s the view to the left as you enter the room. This is my office area and will include my desk, computer and most of the books.

This view is straight ahead as you enter the room.
 This is an aerial view of the room and is the primary working view when you’re building things in Sierra Home Architect.

Decorating

I have been collecting old apron patterns for many years; particularly from the 40′s and 50′s. The cover illustrations on the patterns are so charming. I knew that one day I wanted them decorating the wall of my sewing room, so I’ve also been gradually collecting 8″ x 10″picture frames from thrift stores. A few weeks ago I primed and painted the frames in one of the coordinating colors for my room. Then hung the picture in the frames on the main empty wall of the room. I am just delighted with them. I’d still like to get 4 or 5 more pictures up, so I need to start haunting the thrift stores again.

Below is a close up of some of the pictures. These are not the actual pattern covers. Most of the covers are quite delicate and very discolored. So I scanned the covers and used Photoshop to clean up the pictures, mostly removing discoloration and tears. I’ve prepared a photo gallery of the apron pattern images. Most are post-cleanup, but for a few of them I’ve shown the before and after versions. You can click on the thumbnails to get a larger picture, and click on the larger picture to get a full-size, high-resolution version suitable for printing. The high-resolution pictures run 1 to 2 megabytes.

Cutting Table Being Finished

We’re down to the final stages in the sewing room. Installing the backing board behind the table (all the electrical work will pass behind this, include a multitude of outlets). There’s a soffet to finish at the top of the cabinets and its done. I’ve been using it a lot (as you can tell by all the junk in the foreground, which we had to move off the cutting table and onto the serger table while the backer is being fitted.