Studio Planning (again)

We've been living off-boat/on-shore for about a year now and about nine months in this particular house.  I'm feeling well settled, in fact, it's starting to feel too small.  I'm resigned to the fact that however large a space we have to live in, we'll soon fill it, so it's probably best that we stick to fairly small abodes!

This house is only 90 square metres (970 square foot) and it only has three bedrooms and one bathroom.  It does have three metre wide decks on three sides of the house, so that has given us more 'living' space, but we knew we would be looking at expanding the house as soon as we could.

One of the reasons to extend is to give me an area to sew in.  Hubby promised a dedicated space when we moved out of the apartment and into here - it was one of my conditions for settling for a smaller place.  In the meantime, I've been squeezing into the corners:

My machine takes up one corner of the living room

And using the hall as my storage space:

The funny coloured square on the wall used to be a window.  It's in the process of being filled in because we've been extending the house on the other side, and eventually there will be a big floor to ceiling cupboard on this side.

We've (well, really it's been newly retired Hubby doing all the work with executive design decisions by me) filled in one of the decks on the side of the house and have created a fourth bedroom, another w.c and a new entrance way.

The new entrance looking right through the new bedroom to the other side of the house.

I'm looking out from what used to be my front door to the new entrance way and the new w.c.

And the new bedroom, awaiting paint and flooring.

It was finished just enough and just in time to install my sister, brother in law and nephew who are visiting for a couple of weeks.  And now that they are just about to head home, we are gearing up for another push to get it all finished.  That means plastering the ceilings, painting, flooring, plumbing up the loo and then installing my son in the new bedroom.

Which gets me to the point of this post.  I get to takeover his old bedroom for my studio, which means I get to plan my studio layout!

This messy bedroom will be my new space. I didn't clean up, I'm sure you all know what teenage boy's rooms are like!

It's 2.25 metres wide and 4.2 metres long. The windows run the whole length of the front wall, so two whole walls are taken up with glass - good for light, but not great for storage solutions.  And in here, I want to fit my: 

• HQ Sweet Sixteen machine and table, 
• my Bernina 440 on my Sew-ezi table, 
• a big wardrobe type cupboard for fabric, 
• a cutting surface, an ironing surface 
• and a design wall.  

Hmmmmm, time to get planning.

The End of a Chapter (we're selling our house)

I started this blog waaaaay back in 2009 and my very second post was about moving out onto our piece of land.  We had purchased a 10 acre (4.4) hectare block with dreams about building a house on it, having a garden, orchard, animals - an enviable lifestyle.

We had built a shed for a tractor and other farm equipment, and eventually we decided to wall the shed in and live in it before we built our house.

Well, we never did build our house.  We liked the shed house so much we made it bigger and better and then built another shed right next to it, then a verandah, then a deck and then another deck.  Oh and we added a studio and fancy laundry (with the best stainless steel bench for painting and dyeing ever!!).

We raised calves, we had chickens.

I bred rabbits and ducks.

There were some sheep for a while and consequently, really cute lambs.  The vege garden went through stages of awesomeness and neglectedness.  We planted about a billion trees.  The kids grew.

And then we decided to move onto a boat!  A bit of a radical lifestyle change but right for us at the time.

Well, we've now lived aboard for almost two years.  Originally I said I'd give it a year to see if I liked it.  I do, and so we are staying put.  Now that we've decided that, we've also decided to sell our piece of land.  We want to close that chapter, free ourselves up a bit financially, and consolidate our lives here on the boat.

There are so many things I'll miss.  The beautiful views, the woodburner, my studio and laundry bench, free-range eggs.  But there are things that I won't miss - the long drive to get the kids to school, battling the weeds, mud in winter, escapee animals.

It feels like the right thing to do.

So, um, if anyone wants to buy a lifestyle block in central Bay of Islands, New Zealand, drop me an email, I can hook you up!