Sewing Room

Laoye has finished the “storage wall” in the sewing room. For those of you who haven’t been to our house, the sewing room is a “secret room.” When I bought the house (from plans) I could see that there was a good-sized (about 7.5’ by 13’) space on the second floor that was unused, unfinished, hidden behind a bathroom wall. I asked for access to it somehow, but was told that the dividing wall between it and the bathroom was a “pre-fab truss beam” or some such – but as the house went up I could see clearly that it was nothing more than a n ordinary stud wall. So once the house came into my possession, Laoye broke through the wall and put in a ceiling (since it was open to the attic) and one electrical outlet, as well as basic gyproc on the walls and an old rug on the floor. There was also one wall – the wall at the far end of the room from the door, which (if open) would overlook the master bedroom, that was a “double” wall – the weight-bearing studs formed an inner wall, but a second set of studs made an outer wall at the edge of the floor, some 16 inches from the inner wall. This extension had come about from my redesign of the main floor to give space for a study, which involved making the master bedroom, master bedroom closet, and ensuite all a bit smaller.

Now, six years later, the room is getting really finished. It is th “dead” space formed by the double wall that has become the “storage wall” – Laoye very carefully finished the sides between the studs, inserted shelves, and finished the exposed faces. Laolao bought some baskets that will just fit and now we have a nice space that will provide lots of storage for fabric, notions, and other things, as well as a small space in which to hang things and one to store the ironing board (though it mostly stays down when we’re working in there!).

That finicky bit of work took a full two weeks; the remainder of the finishing work should go much faster. Laoye has now cut an opening in the wall between the sewing room and the stairs, giving us some natural light and a feeling of a bit more spaciousness in there. He will frame that up nicely and then proceed to finish the walls and put in a suspended ceiling with lots of fluorescent light fixtures to give us really good lighting in there, which has been sorely missing. Then he’ll reinstall the work table (made from a sturdy, solid wood 9’ door salvaged from a nearby business that was undergoing renovations!) and we can move the sewing machine back in.

Most of the materials used in this project, apart from the suspended ceiling and lights, are odds and sods of wood that Laoye salvaged from either the dumpsters on site as the houses in the neighbourhood were being built, or from the nearby office building that underwent renovations a few years back. So it has been both environmentally friendly and economical!

My long-term “vision” for the room includes access to it from the loft, by way of a walkway over the stairs leading to the space where the cut-out window has now been pout in the sewing room wall (and then creation of two more cut-out windows) – so that you won’t have to walk through the bathroom to get at it. But that would/ will involve a lot more work, so it will wait for a future day, if ever.

The project almost claimed three of Laoye’s fingers… the table saw decided it was hungry for flesh Saturday-before-last and took a bite. But while the flesh wounds were deep, it didn’t get down to the bone, so he kept his fingers for himself. Initially he just bandaged it up and went right back to work (gotta show who’s boss, after all…) but an hour or two later Laolao took him to emergency to get it looked at, and the doctors put in 14 stitches to close the wounds. Since then he’s been sporting three custom-made bright pink finger-covers to keep the fingers clean while he works.

Laoye has done carpentry work as a hobby for most of his life but this is the first time he’s ever had a serious accident. Thankfully it wasn’t horribly serious and he still has his fingers.