13 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN - Day 9

I am going to owe you a day!
I logged almost 10,000 steps yesterday emptying all of the sewing stuff out of the studio, moving furniture and cleaning. Bob put together two 6-cubby units along the south wall and I shampooed the carpet. Today everything goes back. I can't get to the work table to finish the witch hat door hanger I'd hoped to show you today.

I guess the scary part of this post would be if I posted how my living room/ dinning room looks at the moment.
I'd rather show you the finished product later in the week.

So today, let's take a field trip!

In the mean time, I invite you to view my Stampin' UP! blog
HERE is today's post

You can scroll through the previous eight days to see what I've been doing with current Stampin' UP! sets

WOYWW #323 - Progress

Technically, this is not my work desk.. you can just see part of that in the top right. This foreground shot is of my new cutting station. The two filing cabinets in the front will serve as the base for my ScrapRack unit. Then the rest of the length.. formed by four 3-shelf book cases will be used as a cutting station for my Vagabond and Cricut tools. I think the tool caddy Bob made me several years ago is in it's forever home. Well, forever as soon as Bob gets the shelf board cut that will cover this entire top for an even playing surface. We just ran out of time before he had to head back out onto the boat for the next 21 days. So yes, for the next 21 days I am in limbo again. 

A couple of weeks ago I showed the carpet boxes I was cutting apart. What I didn't show was the ginormous Ziplock bag - XXL (2'W x 2.5'L or 60CM x 82CM) that was BULGING with misc. chip board, cardboard, foamboard, matboard. I went through the entire contents and cut things down that I wanted to keep and used most of the cardboard as garden mulch.

I kept the mat board pieces, larger foam core, larger chip board and fit the 'keepers' into this:

Initially, this cabinet held all of my StampinUp 12x12 cardstock. I've since moved it to 'file' storage on the top and repurposed these drawers to hold the condensed cardboard bag. If I can not fit something into a drawer I either have to swap with something already in there or pitch. But once I'm able to start constructing mixed media pieces, I don't see that as a delimma. :-)

So why am I showing you a sneak peek? Because this is what is on my desk and every week near 100 bloggers join in the snoop of each others workspaces courtesy of Miss Julia at StampingGround. You are welcome to join us! I'm sure what you have on your desk is way more exciting than mine!

THE BIG REVEAL! - The Build Part 1

My Inspiration Colors

The day is FINALLY here! Well, we are getting closer. A bit of backstory:

My office (I'm a writer) and studio are in the basement. My space is about 120 square feet (10x12) and has one small casement window. Air flow is a real issue. Then I have a separate room about the same size for my sewing and mixed media - no window. When we moved here seven years ago I had a place for everything and room to work. However, with time to play and explore new mediums - not to mention new techniques and products being introduced daily - I've outgrown the space.

During a quiet dinner for two about four years ago, my darling husband made the comment I needed to get out of the 'dungeon' (the basement).

Challenge 1: Funds
We looked into determining the cost of building an above ground addition for me. Though the estimates were comparable, I was not ready to go into debt for my work space. So we put the project aside and I continued to outgrow my 120 square feet.

Challenge 2: Knees
I know I'm overweight by about 50 pounds but for some reason I never considered myself 'fat'. I am very active, though not athletic. I never was. But I don't stand still for more than about 5 seconds... if you're lucky. Since I also work from home, I have to make multiple trips up and down the steps every day to multi-task between work and household stuff. I have finally gotten to the point where by the third trip my knees are telling me to pick a level and stay there. I was raised family and home come first yet I'm at a juncture in my writing and music promotion career where I can't let that slide either.

So with both vehicle payments behind us and needing to put a new roof on the house, we revisited the possibility of my addition. We signed the papers on Monday afternoon.

This is a check register designed specifically for the project. I will track every bit of spending. Over the coming weeks I'll share some of my inspiration pieces with you. However, I am querying a couple of magazines and since they will want 'first rights', I may be limited to what I can show. I hope to know more on that part soon. In the mean time, updated posts of some sort will run on Fridays... recapping the week's progress.

And Now... The Floor Plan:

Our house is the front rectangle - about 1200 square feet. The new studio will come off the south side of the house into the backyard from off the dining room. The new space is 16' x 30' = 480 sq. ft. 

Thanks to a 1/4 credit in Home Ec in the 1970s I am able to draw floor plans to scale. I have utilized every inch of space to accommodate:

Office

Mixed Media

Sewing

Spiritual (currently in our bedroom)

Paper Crafting

Collections (Broncos & Girl Scouts) that are currently still in tubs in storage

In future posts I'll show you more of how I'm utilizing the space. Some of what I've learned along the way will be used in my Organization Class in mid January. 

In the mean time, tell me what you would do with this much space and what your medium of choice is (paper/ mixed media/ fabric/ etc) . I'll draw one person for a Surprise Bag of goodies! 

FIRST STEP Part 2...

Well, hope my pics from yesterday didn't scare you too  much. I promise, today's are not as bad.

This is taken from the doorway looking towards the cutting table. The entertainment center in the back corner houses all of my quilt kits. Right now the cutting table is full of Mixed Media art stuff and the blue and white basket on the corner is card kits from a group I belong to on SCS. It's imperative I get this all organized as it is my turn to send out envelopes to the other 11 participants on Feb. 1st. Eeeek!

Don't let the tubs scare you. That is how I store my large pieces of fabric by type. It keeps them dry just in case we get another torrential rain. The white cabinet holds my SU fabrics, books for mixed media projects and book pages I've removed from previous projects. The clear tub on top of that is my paper maker screen and supplies.

Let's look at the cutting table. For those of you who've not heard, this was something I designed and my dear husband built for me over 25 years ago. The 4 legs are 4x4 posts then it's all framed in 2x4s and 1/2" plywood. Then we laminated it in a cream counter top laminate. If you look on the long side (right) you'll see a drop leaf. There is one on each long side. When they are up - the top measures 4'x8'. Then there is a drop leaf on the end that is 2'x2.5'.  Initially this was created as a dining room table for the farm house we lived in right after we were married. With all the leaves up, we could comfortably seat 12 people. And talk about counter space for major baking projects!  The front side is solid but the left side is a set of cabinets. A top shelf that runs the full 4' length of the cabinet for large cookie sheets and bigger items, then 3 cubby cabinets for storing mixing bowls and misc. baking supplies.

Now it houses sewing supplies and gives me plenty of space to cut and play.

I've padded and covered this one in an ironing board fabric for quick pressings  jobs. I want to use that right hand side to hang my quilting rulers and mats. My plan is to cover it with a partial sheet of peg board and the shortest hooks I can find.

The other area of the sewing room that I need to work on for now is the table where I put the sewing machine. I have flannel-backed plastic table cloth on the wall behind it for an 'audition' wall.. a place to toss up blocks I'm working to edit placements before sewing them together. The cotton fabric sticks to the flannel without use of pins. The table is full of mixed media stuff, too that needs to be moved to it's actual spot. The tubs underneath are Unfinished Projects on my 2013 To Do list....

This is the room I want to work on today. Then I as I pull items from the Studio, I have this space to sort them in. The whole project really isn't as bad as it looks... it's just getting started LOL.. So that's where I am headed....

Right after lunch!

THE FIRST STEP...

... to any project is getting organized. Before I can work on any of the daily projects from my GOAL list, I need to get the Studio back in order. So today, I thought I'd share a few horrific pictures with you and let you join me as I dig my way out.

 This is the view of my office/ studio from the doorway. Can you say DISASTER! And it is worse than it looks if you are standing amidst the piles. Once I get in there, it won't take long to put stuff in order, it's just been making myself take time away from the writing to do so. The book case in the far back corner is all books I want to read and pass on this year. I've not counted. But if I can free up that shelf, I can unpack my 'keepers' - thus emptying a tub in the basement. The next shelf to the right is my vintage book collection. I really wish I had someplace better to store these and I'm working on that.

The cabinet the TV is sitting on is full of all my research books. I write fiction and have a list of historical fiction pieces I want to write so I've accumulated a vast amount of material on various points in history. On top of the cabinet I have my PS2. The game I keep trying to make time to get too. But it's there when I'm ready. You can also see stereo speakers. We've discovered the only thing that works on the dual cassette/ cd/ stereo is the radio part. So that will come out. But you can bet I'll have something to fill that space in a hurry.

The desk in the foreground is my stamping table. As you can see, not a square inch of room to stamp. Here's a picture of that corner taken from the office chair:

The entire stamping space takes up approximately 80 square feet. That's a lot of space... when things are organized and put where they belong. In the chair underneath the blue tub is a Epson photo printer my husband picked up at an auction. Everything is there except ink cartridges. When we priced those out, we discovered it is cheaper for me to get my prints done at Walgreens when they have a print sale. So not sure what I'm doing with that. Anyone want a printer? Oh, and the tub goes back to storage at the end of the month. It is holding my bathroom towels/ wash clothes until time to take down my snowman display in the bathroom.

Finally, for the Studio portion.. this stack is a hodge podge of things that just need figured out. I had started collecting the Starbucks bottles when I thought we would be building my new studio this spring. I saw a room partition display in a magazine I wanted to do. Well, I won't be doing that any time soon so not sure what I'm doing with the bottles. The litter case boxes were to be used in place of gym baskets on the shelves. Nope, won't need those either. Those will go to recycling next week.

The plastic cart is full of memorabilia, papers and embellishments to use in Adrian and Abby's scrapbooks. So yeah, if I work on my GOAL list, then this should get emptied and need a new home by end of the year.

Last pic on my list is of the writing corner of this room.
I'd love to replace the monitor with a flat screen, however the tower has been acting up so I'm not sure replacing it is even worth the expense at this point. I'll just work around it. for now.

I need to go through the stuff pinned to the bulletin board and those two tubs of 3.5" floppies. I have a converter but I need to make time to go through them and see which files I need to safe then get rid of them. Wish there were a green way to recycle those things. There has to be a mixed media something or other... right? Hmmm

So that's the scary office/ studio combination and my project for this week. Maybe for Friday's post I'll have a surprise for you. Because until I get this done, the weekly schedule just is NOT going to happen!

What does your space look like? Leave a comment and link me to pictures of your creative space... good or bad!

Creative Blessings!