These are the already existing stairs (behind this door with the embroidery hoops on it here) leading to the attic. This is most definitely the beforish group of pictures of my attic studio even though when I took them in the middle of yesterday my guys had already accomplished tons since this pic (more on my guys soon). It could be quite drab to look at all this wood and stuff - that's what that clicky button on your computer mouse is for. But if you'd like to come up with me......
As you come up the stairs and turn to your right you'd see the east wall of the house where we've busted out a hole in the brick wall for a window space that'll be about 6 ft wide and 4 ft high. Its also the only way to bring all the large materials into the attic for building. So there is a scaffold set up from the garage wall below and up 3 stories to this gaping hole. Our house is really a long, one story house, but the garage is tucked in under that main story, and now this studio will be above that, making it pretty high up their. The first day Nicolas (sans cast) saw the scaffold when he got off the bus he didn't hesitate to scale up the side of it and enter the house by coming through the hole, and down the stairs to say hello with a proud grin. Pat and Geoff (my guys) had taken the boards and ladder away from the lower areas of the scaffold so no one would be tempted to try it. Nicolas would have likely come up the hard way even if the easy way had been left in place. Sigh. Where was I?
Turning clockwise a little from the window area, is this very long wall, about 25 ft, that runs along the front side of the house. I'm not putting windows, or dormers here, because there would be the need to also kind of balance that build out at the other end of the house and we don't have the plans or budget for that. (Also that property assessor guy that looks our house from the road every year would see it and might assume our house is worth more than it was last year, and who wants to pay property taxes on such silly assumptions? Eehhem.)
Here's a view of that long wall from the window end. The short studs that you see there will become a knee wall which will be the back wall of a very long row of shelving that tucks under the angle of the ceiling. That'll house bolts of fabric, quilts, pattern boxes, etc. I'm smiling.
Now we're turned back down to the west end of the shelving wall, and back at the stairwell. My long sewing table is going to run along that sort of half wall there. My kids are going to throw a bunch of crap over that half wall and down the stairs. I'm just giving you the full vision here.
On the other side of the staircase, except for building out a little more alcove space for storage, we are walling off the rest of the attic, and making access to it by way of a door. You can sort of make out lots of pattern boxes, bolts of fabric, etc behind the beginning of the framed wall. Our attic runs the entire length of the house, and so provides about another 3000 sq. ft. of space, which is crazy. The center portion of the attic/house actually has higher ceiling clearance- about 9 feet- than this east end that I'm building out which only has about 7.5 feet at the highest. But the center portion is huge, like about 2000 sq. ft., so way more than I want to heat and cool or even design for at the present. My new space will be about 430.
Now turning clockwise again from the previous picture you can see where my sort of T-shaped studio stems out into a new dormer that will face the back yard. This north side of the studio will get a wall of fabric shelves for my personal stash (from that metal pole on the left to the wooden support in the middle) and then take a turn into the left side of the dormer which will be a wall of drawers for art supplies, etc.
The windows that will go in the dormer will give me this view of one side of our backyard. Hello trees.
And hello confused little dog. How did you get so tiny? If I peer over the edge of the dormer hole I see a puppy that wants to know why his mommy is standing in the roof. Cute little schmookums.
Heres that hole in the roof for the dormer again. My drafting table will go at the end of this under the windows. It feels very tree-housey up here, I hope that doesn't change once its finished. To the right of the drafting table along the east wall of the dormer, we're going to build a long counter style desk for my computer, and other desky stuff that I don't have much room for downstairs. There were some really great old, aged planks of wood up here flooring just a tiny bit of the attic for walking around that I want to use for that.
So there it is guts and all. Thanks for peeking around with me. I might be the only person that likes the sound of power tools and building while I work. I love knowing that little dreams are getting fulfilled up there.
more soon, xoxo, Anna