Monday 21 January 2013

Dream studio : Layout and storage

My thoughts lately have been focused on how to make our one-bedroom apartment (with a separate entrance hall and enclosed balcony) more homely and less work studio. My husband has a music studio set up in the enclosed balcony, which works well. But one side of my U-shaped work surface doubles as our dining room (well, table) and my workspace takes up half of our living room, which keeps my mind on work even during downtime. Our entrance hall is fairly empty and used mainly for storing stuff on the floor and a clothes horse or two. So I’ve been trying to come up with an ingenious way of reconfiguring the space to make the mish-mash of furniture we have at the moment work better and to create some more storage. 

I really only use the narrow table that makes up one arm of my U-shaped surface to store my sewing machine, overlocker, some files and a lamp, so it’s pretty much wasted space and something I’m looking to lose. I spotted the perfect replacement – a wooden display cabinet of about 24 smallish drawers with glass panels – at one of the charity shops I frequent, but they’re seldom keen to part with their display furniture… Still debating how to convince them to sell it to me.

And then the idea so far is to use the entrance hall for storage as it’s a fairly dark room that leads into all the other rooms, so a bit of a thoroughfare too. I’m thinking custom-built shelving on the slightly odd-shaped available wall space. Or cubes that are open front and back and can be stacked to fit the available space. Or a good rummage around some second-hand shops to see what I can find to fit the space. Who knows. It’s all still in the pondering phase.

But I have found some good workspace and storage ideas online to inspire me, which is half the fun of rearranging one’s home and/or workspace.

A standalone, compact workspace combined with storage:


Overhead cubby holes and a hanging thread board:


A high shelf for out-of-the-way storage, plus lots of small drawers for needlework bits and pieces (by Melissa and Caleb):



Wide, shallow drawers for storing large pattern printouts or laying threads out for easy access:


Cubby holes under the table that make good use of wasted space:

 

And a door organiser for easy access to small bits and pieces:

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Holy crap that second is amazing!

Anonymous said...

Mmmm, all those wonderful clean, clear,dedicated crafting spaces...