I’m settled in at my new desk. John put it up for me and it’s pretty much just the right height. So that’s something. I’ve wanted to have a desk/crafting table in this corner for years. And I’m super happy to have it now, I can look out the window and see my neighbors watching TV (yeah I know that is a bit Rear Windowish, but hush.)
What I think is really cool, is that I have been able to purge enough of my crafting stuff that I could fit my sewing machines, notions yarn, and all of my fabrics up on the shelves above. I got rid of 2 giant black garbage bags worth of fabric scraps. Stuff I knew I was never actually going to sew with. And what THAT means is that I could get all of that stuff out of the kitchen, which will mean that my sewing machines don’t get greasy anymore. It’s a bit of a cascade effect too, because it also makes more room there.
The desk itself is built from Rubbermaid shelving tracks and melamine board from Home Depot. We used 3 tracks, and screwed them into the studs. we didn’t center the middle track, but installed it in a stud and the installed the left track 2 studs away from it. This was an accident, but it’s awesome, since it means I can have a bulletin board, and a narrower shelf both over the desk for my serger, and underneath it for my regular sewing machine and sewing notions. I originally was going to have the desk and shelves go across the whole width of the nook, but got annoyed waiting for the cutting at HD, and just went with 4 ft wide boards instead. That ended up being perfect, because I can hang my yardsticks and clear rulers on the wall alongside the desk. My cutting mat is hanging on a nail under the desk.
We went to ikea for the storage boxes, and decided to go with white, because even though the room gets a lot of light, having dark stuff straight up to the ceiling really started to feel oppressive. And then I got a chair. Or a stool really . Ikea had this cool office chair/active stool that wobbles around. It can also be raised a lot higher than most normal office chairs. Which is great, because I’m apparently a jolly giant who will never find the right size office chair.
The clean house cascade effect has been amazing, This is the first time that I have been able to keep the apartment consistently clean for several weeks. Ever. The railroad layout is so awkward, that no matter what we did or how we moved things around, it was never really “livable.” Now the living room has areas that make sense, I was able to get rid of a cabinet in the kitchen, so my bike has an actual home, and Tara also has a desk now underneath her bed, and THAT has also freed up a ton of space and made her room work better.
So happy. LOVE MY DESK.