Trying to stage a comeback

When we started packing the first pod back in December, I held back many, many quilting projects. There were easy ones, challenging ones, cutting projects, easy piecing ... you name it.  I was convinced that, once the house was on the market, I would be bored by the holding pattern and I would get so much sewing done while I offloaded nervous energy.  I could not have been more wrong.  I underestimated how little energy I'd have and, also, how much effort it would be to set up my table, machine, etc. to do even the most lightweight sewing.  Even Friendship blocks became a chore.




When I returned from Amishland in early February, I pretty much closed up shop on the sewing room.  To complicate things further, I decided that I didn't want carpet in my sewing room.  It was a multi-visit effort to determine what materials to replace it with, find an installer, meet with the installer to get a measure, and shop for tile.  We had a really good shopping trip ... onnnnn the way to the airport from our May trip.  Reset for another month.  Sigh.  Luckily, I was able to line up the installer to arrive on Wednesday of this week--just two days after our arrival.



To give you some context, here is the floorplan of the house. 

My sewing room is Bedroom 2.  We gave B a choice of bedrooms and he quickly picked Bedroom 3.  That worked out for me since my biggest concern with a dedicated sewing room is feeling isolated.  The doorway to my sewing room is very close to the kitchen and living room area so that alleviates some of that.  I will still do most of my sewing on the Sew-Ezi table in the living room so I will mostly use the sewing room for design wall space, fabric selection, cutting and, hopefully, layering up and machine quilting large projects.

Here is a before shot, with the carpet.  It was a neutral color and only two years old but I really didn't want to chase threads and pins in carpeting.

Here is an after shot.  I picked a gray since the wall color is white with a gray tone.  Most of the rest of the house is tile which includes beige, taupe and gray.  You can still see some of the grout streaks that will need to be wiped away.

My plan is to put three IKEA PAX units on the wall to the left of the window.  Two will have sliding doors and they will contain my stash in wire bins sorted by color family.  The other will be open shelves for things that are in containers already.  Since the units are 93" high, the top shelves will hold batting and wool since they are light and not frequently used.  The units are 40" wide so that will mostly fill that wall.  The wall opposite the window will have a design wall of some sort.  I'll put a bookcase under the window and, eventually, add an island or table in the middle for cutting and basting.
Since the PAX cabinets are so tall, we need to rent a vehicle to go pick them up.  Hopefully, we can figure out logistics in the next few days so I can get the units built and start unpacking my sewing stuff before the other pod arrives.  That's the optimistic version of the plan.  Since we brought most of my sewing room with the first pod, there is a log jam in the living room with 24 boxes of sewing stuff plus everything we moved out in preparation for the tile.  Adding the new pod contents into the mix before sorting the boxes into the sewing room sounds like chaos!