Back in the spring, right around the time that COVID-19 hit, my amazing husband helped me transform the main living room of our house into a new studio space for me. That particular room is very large, and it was perfect to set up my space exactly how I needed it. Little did I know that soon that space would be seen from all over the world in videos for Janome America!
When I moved into the living room space, it meant our new “family room” would be the formal living room of the house. Here in Maryland our home is a very traditional style 2 story house with a farmhouse appeal. While I love this house, it doesn’t give a great open concept feel and the rooms are a little more separated and blocked off, but nothing I can’t work with for sure. The problem we ran into with this new arrangement is that it now gave a rather small room for our family space, though not a huge issue since we spend more time in the large kitchen and dining room as a family that anywhere else in the house. Of course, everyone also seemed to find a way to end up in my studio space visiting, watching football or the usual paranormal shows.
On Monday morning I woke up way early, and couldn’t get back to sleep. My mind was wandering along as usual and I suddenly realized that we are about to be decorating for Christmas in a matter of a couple of weeks, and I had no place to put our big Christmas tree. The family room is now to small, the dining room is full, entry wasn’t an option. I had quite the dilemma to work through, and much to my husband disagreement, I decided it was time to switch studio space once again. As I explained it to him over messenger since he was at work: “We will move my studio space and split it between the family room and dining room, move all the living room stuff back to the living room, and the dining room table to the eat-in area in our kitchen.” Seriously, I can only imagine the groans or complains that he was voicing to his work buddies for what was waiting on him when he got home from work. Probably the same that my oldest son, who helps move furniture around here, was complaining to me. But when this Mom has her mind set to something, it’s gonna get done. Oh and for the record, we are not “formal” people, so losing a formal living and dining room was not a devastating moment to us!
So where did I start? Eat-in kitchen area is cleaned out and dining room table moved by 7am. All additional dining room furniture moved into family room to get it out of the way, except the china cabinet. A little note about the china cabinet, it’s been loaded with my great-grandmother china and is a beast to move, plus it’s really tall, and to move it you have to take the upper glassed in section down…so it wasn’t getting moved out the room, but it would be repurposed. So by 9am, the room was bare (except that china cabinet), cleaned and ready for fresh paint. Know what’s a nice surprise…when you find the perfect paint in your closet that coordinates with the paint you had already planned to use. It may be hard to see from the photos but the lower portion of the walls are painted in the surprise paint color of Indigo Streamer by Valspar, upper walls are Comet Dust (also Valspar), but I used Sherwin Williams Signature for the paint base.
By the end of the evening all the walls were painted, trim was painted (it’s Perfect White also by Valspar), curtains were rehung, and the guys were able to move all my studio equipment from the living room into the prior dining room, move all the regular furniture back to the real family room, and clear out the formal living room so I could begin the task of painting it on Tuesday.
So on Tuesday after running for more Comet Dust, the prior formal living room received the same paint treatments, clean up and arranging of furniture. By 10pm, the dear husband had enough of the constant “no lets’ put that here…or wait does it work better there” and said it was time to go to bed. No complaints here, I was exhausted too! However, sleep would once again prove to be difficult because my mind would not stop thinking of studio arrangements (yes thank you adulthood for making exciting moments be about furniture). He said to sleep on it, and I did a little bit…and came up with a better solution…at 5am!
Since Wednesday was Veteran’s Day, and I’m married to a retired Air Force vet, he was actually home for the day and able to spend it with me getting everything rearranged…and putting in a new light fixture that would sit over the top of my main machine. So about that light fixture…it’s an Allen & Roth from Lowes (y’all don’t want to see my Lowes bills), that looked simple to install right?? No…no it wasn’t. The poor husband had to spend over an hour cutting and rewiring the drop down pendants because otherwise I probably would have been hitting my head on them constantly. We tried to follow the directions and put them up inside the cover but there was so much it wouldn’t allow us to attach it to the ceiling. So a 45 minute install job turned into something like 2 1/2 hours for a light fixture. I’m not sure when our shoulders are going to recover from that one!
Finally, once the lights were in place, the magic of bringing the rooms together, setting everything up and decorating could happen. I also need to give a huge shout out to my kids and husband again because while I was busting my butt to get the studio space together, they were putting the living room all back together, and taking care of everything else in the house so I could focus. Now that the rooms are back together, I’m more than happy to share my space with all of you. Oh and that monster china cabinet I mentioned earlier…yeah it was repurposed into holding all the quilt tops I need to quilt, or ones that need binding, and ones that just look too pretty. I’ll probably paint it at some point but for now I’m just tired of painting! Also, I did end up with a pretty awesome view and will be able to work while overlooking the front of my property and two pastures that my horses and dairy goats get graze in. So enjoy.
If you have any questions about my room, the table, and my love of Janome sewing and embroidery machines, please feel free to ask. Maybe I’ll be able to show it off again in another live Janome video soon. Oh and since I do get asked all the time, the large sewing cabinet that my Janome Quilt Maker 15000 sits in is made by Horn of America (and without a doubt my favorite cabinet)! Thanks for checking in!
On The Farm & Under My Needle 
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