New Sewing Room Cupboards

Hi Everyone, welcome back.

While I usually try and post here on Mondays, this week there wasn’t really much to tell you. Today however, I have very exciting things to show you. Not only are my cupboards now finished, with doors on and everything, but I have even sorted out my fabrics and organised them neatly into tubs.

The installing of these cupboards was quite a process, but they are finally done. While I was going to get some local people to put in some built ins, it was going to be quite a number of months before most of them would even come and and measure for a quote, and then a longer wait still to have them built. So I hopped onto the Ikea website instead to check out my flat pack options. I decided on the Platsa cupboard as they were a good depth and I could make them go almost up to the ceiling.

My cupboards then arrived just a few days after placing my order which was great, however I then had to wait to put them in until we got the walls ready. Aaron got to work removing the cornices and skirting board and patching up a couple holes in the wall, I then painted over the patches. Aaron and his father then patched up the huge, gap between the top of the walls and the ceiling. We then had the problem of what to do with the cornicing to the right of the cupboard. If we just cut the cornicing up to where the cupboards came to it would come out in front of it and stop us being able to open that top right-hand door, not particularly useful. And we didn’t really want to cut the cornicing shorter to allow the door to open as that would just leave this weird, ugly gap between the cornice and the cupboard. So after a couple of days wondering what to do, I thought why not just move the cupboard over a bit? There around 15cm of space between the couch and where the left-hand side of the cupboard would be, so we just moved the cupboards over and then filled in the new gap between the cupboard and the wall with some narrow shelves.

From this ugly bar to my beautiful new cupboards.

With such a narrow space there’s not a whole of things I can keep there. My sister suggested it would make a good wine rack, however we hardly ever drink wine and so really don’t need a wine rack. Aaron realised it would be the perfect size to keep my step-ladder in, which is much handier than taking it to and from the garage all the time. And then he and his father put in a couple shelves for me as well, on which I’ll store things like wrapping paper and rolls of interfacing and fusible webbing and such. They made the first shelf quite a bit higher than the step ladder so as to be able to fit in an ironing board one day if I want to instead of the step ladder. And so with that problem solved the men got my cupboards installed, with just the shelves and doors to go.

I then hunted around to find the tubs that would best fit my space before Aaron put the shelves in so that he could put them at the heights for my specific containers. The shelf holders are actually screwed into the walls of the cupboards, not just pegged into holes, so not as quick and easy to change as some others. And so I found my tubs and got my fabrics all sorted out and organised by type, and I am absolutely loving how it has all turned out! As you can see there are still three smaller tubs without labels, that’s because they are currently empty! So I still have space in those three tubs, and some room up the top too which I think will house my batting rolls, and the bottom shelf as well. I’m going to put my sewing machines in the bottom right space, the bottom left currently has an empty tub. So there is still some room for some quilting fabric which is great, because it’s not all going to fit in my cupboard under my cutting bench!

So now that my sewing room cupboard saga is finally at an end it is time to order some more for the dining room! We decided to just order these ones first and see how we liked them before putting 3 metres of cupboards along the dining room wall. And, as we are very happy with them we are moving ahead with the dining room.

Well that’s it for now, when Evangeline wakes up for her nap we’ll be heading out to the Bathurst show in which I have entered three quilts for the first time. So, come back on Monday to see how they went!

Till then,

Keep On Stitching!