Our New Sewing Room/Home Office, Episode #2

When I left off in the last installment of our new sewing room/home office renovating project, we were up to putting all the new plasterboard on the walls. Here’s a refresher for you.

Once the plastering was done (ha – I love how I write it just like that, truth be told we are not professional plasterers, nor have any plastering experience! That considered I think handy hubby has done an outstanding job, square set wall/ceiling joins and everything!) we got onto the painting. Oh the painting… We painted, and painted, and painted. It seemed neverending, in the height of Summer, pregnant, painting a ceiling. Ugh. But, the end started to come into sight. We painted the whole room in Antique White USA, my favourite – classic, not too creamy, not too warm, not too grey, not too stark (our bedroom is also this colour, and Eleanor’s new room and the baby’s nursery will be soon painted the same). We also got Matt’s trusty sparky dad in to wire in powerpoints (lots of them) as well as two lights – a 4x task light to go over the desk area, and one in the middle of the room to be more of a decorative feature rather than function in spreading light.

Once the room was painted (about a thousand times it seemed), the electrical work done and window architraves were on we set to hanging the door and then the wall cabinets, which we had bought from Ikea. They are the Metod wall cabinets, with Hittarp doors and Faglavik black handles. I have always steered clear of black in our home, but this space I wanted to be a bit more industrial, and I love how they look now. We also bought an extra Hittarp door for a base cabinet Matt was going to custom build for the desk to sit on – the base cabinets from Ikea weren’t deep enough for how wide we wanted our desk to be. A Horda open shelf also made it’s way home with us, for a little bit more storage on the other side of the window, near the door. Once the wall cabinets were up the room really started to look ‘real’ – and exciting! By this point we’d also finished off the little store room next door to the new sewing room/office, Matt built the shelving to suit our needs and we took no time in stacking it to the rafters with stuff! And yes we did fit all the stuff that once lived in the room which was three times the size – it was simply a matter of space efficiency and having some custom built shelving to make life a little less chaotic.

Now our focus turned to the flooring (after we fixed up a section of the concrete floor which was lower than the rest with a heap of floor leveler!) I wasn’t too fussed about what went on the floor to be honest, something hard wearing would be ideal as it would be a work space essentially, easy to clean and somewhat insulated would be a bonus. We originally thought we might use leftover faux timber lino from our bedroom (and what is through our whole house) but it wasn’t quite the suitable size, we did use it in the new little store room next door though. Matt saw a pallet of laminate flooring on sale at Bunnings, a few text messages of photos later and we had our flooring sorted. I was a bit concerned it was a bit ‘orangey’ wood – a pet hate of mine – but once it was installed it has definitely grown on me. It was the simple click together tongue and groove style planks, which turned out not to be as simple as we first thought, but Matt did say it definitely got easier as he went across the room, as the floor sort of settled into place and had more weight to it. It simply sits on the floor, no adhesive, but you do put an insulation layer underneath to stop moisture getting in (this proved also tricky to lie down and needed to be wrangled – marriage building exercises I tell you!)

So, painting? Tick. Wall cabinets? Tick. Flooring? Tick. We were kicking some serious goals. The photo above shows our preparations for the next stage – benchtops! Our built in desk will run along almost two whole walls, with a his and her side for Matt’s office area and my sewing area. The next stage also includes building a wall of custom shelving with a lift up cutting table for me, and putting all the finishing touches on – the exciting bit! For now though, it’s time to pack away the paintbrushes – thank goodness!