When my husband and I bought our first house over 23 years ago, there was no doubt that I needed a room all to myself just for crafting. There was a formal living room at the front of the house that we converted into a studio that I used to craft, teach classes and have my craft club friends over. It was chock full of crafting supplies and I spent many many wonderful hours with my friends in that studio. After 13 years in that house, we moved abroad for 10 years, leaving all my crafts behind. I sold or gave away most of the crafts supplies, keeping things that I treasured or that wouldn't "go bad" while I was out of the country.
Renting abroad gave us little room to have a studio. I took up jewelry making along the way and at first that didn't take up too much space. But, do you remember the name of this blog? Yes, I have to have everything! Still I didn't have the room to have my own space. Once we moved to Germany, I started paper crafting again, took some ceramic and sewing classes, and continued with the jewelry making. We had an extra bedroom that I quickly outgrew so when our landlord moved out, we rented his 2 room apartment downstairs and converted it into a studio. Unfortunately, there wasn't any heat in it, so I rarely worked down there. I just used it for storage.
In March 2012, we moved back to the U.S.A. After about 8 months of renting we felt confident to buy our second home. The search was on...online. After looking at hundreds of homes online, researching neighborhoods and figuring out what we really wanted, we contacted our agent and started looking in real life. Guess how long it took us to find our current house? One day. We found it online, looked at the house the next day, and signed the papers the day after that. We had a long list that this house fulfilled for us, a big kitchen that opened into the living area, a 2 car garage, plenty of bedrooms for visitors and most importantly...a big formal dining/living room that would be the perfect studio! It's got a long way to go before it's done, but its coming together as you can see!
