'Waltzing's for dreamers...
...and the losers in love'
Luckily it's my furniture that's waltzing round the house, not me! The Mad Hatter's Tea Party of Furniture continues apace. It's like my house has become a four dimensional Rubik's Cube.
It's taken almost the whole week to get things sorted, but I finally have the furniture IN! Still need to take the treadle to bits and assemble the desk... Then take the present desk to pieces and store it in the shed. Bits of it are beyond redemption as far as selling it or giving it away go, but the sheets of birch veneered chipboard can be recycled into other tables. I'm thinking we could use it to build a replacement for the water bowser table and a table to go round the pole in the bell tent, should we need one in the future. The 'new' desk should fit more neatly into the corner of the living room, and as I'll be at an angle to the room, I should be out of the draft from the doors and less in the way fro folk getting past. Several flavours of win there, then. But with a corner desk, I need to rethink bookcase placement and size...
The old printer and printer table will also depart. The drawer set with the new printer/scanner and the clutter (staplers, envelopes, batteries, spare cables for pooters, telephone directories etc.) will be shuffled, and the uplight standard lamp will go there rather than here. If it survives... I may replace it with a new one with added reading light. This sorta fing:
There are sewing versions with added daylight bulb and magnifying glass, which might be a neat idea. I like the idea of the control on the stalk. The currant one has a button on the cable at the base, and we need a lamp-poking stick to make it work in the position it's in. And it is leaning against the wall to stay upright...
The sewing tables...
I haven't said much about them so far. I scored a mighty bargain on that ebay thing...
Two Robertson of America large quilting tables, one drawer chest, and a corner desk, for the grand total of £750 plus another £160 in fuel and van hire to get it home. Like the Horn cabinet I got for Bernie the Bernina 1150MDA, they needed a little fettling. The Horn cabinet was £80 for a 1970's version (plus £20 in fuel to collect it), rather than £367 for a new one. Himself adjusted the lift and routed a small bit out of the top to fit Bernie, and it's great in use.
Old set-up, with old dining table:
And the new tables in place:
I totted up the price of buying the American tables new, and cringed! Over £1800 before I paid to import them. Do I care that mine have a gently bodged in Horn lift in one and the original crude mechanical job in the other? or that a bit of the plastic coating was lifting on a drawer? Not a bit! Himself will fit another proper Horn lift into the second table when I can get one, and is cutting suitable templates to fit round various machines out of sample sheets of laminate flooring tiles! The 'tile' side is going on the under side, and the blank base side is the side we will see. No, it won't match the table tops, but hey, for £6 a sheet (out of which we get two drop-ins), and some nifty cutting from Himself, with this I can afford to have two blanks for solid table topping, plus a cut-out for each of the main machines we use: Lily, Erik the Viking, and Nina ther Bernina ("You do know what ther means?"). This and the additional lift will mean we can use all the machines as free-arm or flatbed machines at the push of a machine! Yo! Other machines can also be used as purely table top machines if required. And he glued down the bit of plastic so it won't escape or damage further.
I am slowly wrangling the contents of various wire baskets drawer sets in to the drawers or other storage. I think room will need to be found for the thread tower, but most of the rest of the clobber will eventually go in the cupboards in the conservatory. So far I have made space for the two sewing tables, the Horn cabinet, the two Ikea bin towers, the roll of paper, and the ironing board!
Ikea units moved from here, behind the door:
To here, under the window:
To make space for them and the roll of pattern paper, I had to evict the treadle from the corner, and the crates of boots from the cat door end:
At the moment the boots and treadle are just scudding about in a lackadaisical manner, getting in the way. The massive ironing pile and the over flowing box of hangers are skittering round the living room being a pain. I'll have to see if Himself has time to deal with some of it this evening, but my priority is to swap the desks over. I may take the cutting table down for now, to make more room for the Rubiking.
I'm going to see if we can get one of those things for hanging ironing boards on cupboard walls, and leave that corner free for a hat stand on which to hang customer toiles and unfinished garments. We used to have a rail, but it just became a clothing park! The ironing board can hang on the wall of the larder cupboard behind the other half of the French door.
So, to do the sums...
I spent a total of £1,010 on my tables. The two new ones I originally thought to buy would have cost £1, 004. I'd only have had ONE sewing table for standard machines, and a lot less surface area for supporting sewing. So far, my budget is out by a few quid, not counting getting a second table lift. If I go for that, the budget will go up, but I'll still have an excellent set-up for what we are doing, and there's no real hurry for that second lift if it proves to be a bit more expensive than I'd like.
Meanwhile, on with the dance! I need to wrangle the bits and pieces so they block neither the door nor the catflap, and aren't lying in wait like a furniture flavoured ambush, nipping out with corners to catch us on the ankle or poke legs! The new desk top has already tried to take a bite out of Himself! It got in cahoots with the Dyson, which left a snake of cable underfoot for the unwary...
Luckily it's my furniture that's waltzing round the house, not me! The Mad Hatter's Tea Party of Furniture continues apace. It's like my house has become a four dimensional Rubik's Cube.
It's taken almost the whole week to get things sorted, but I finally have the furniture IN! Still need to take the treadle to bits and assemble the desk... Then take the present desk to pieces and store it in the shed. Bits of it are beyond redemption as far as selling it or giving it away go, but the sheets of birch veneered chipboard can be recycled into other tables. I'm thinking we could use it to build a replacement for the water bowser table and a table to go round the pole in the bell tent, should we need one in the future. The 'new' desk should fit more neatly into the corner of the living room, and as I'll be at an angle to the room, I should be out of the draft from the doors and less in the way fro folk getting past. Several flavours of win there, then. But with a corner desk, I need to rethink bookcase placement and size...
The old printer and printer table will also depart. The drawer set with the new printer/scanner and the clutter (staplers, envelopes, batteries, spare cables for pooters, telephone directories etc.) will be shuffled, and the uplight standard lamp will go there rather than here. If it survives... I may replace it with a new one with added reading light. This sorta fing:
There are sewing versions with added daylight bulb and magnifying glass, which might be a neat idea. I like the idea of the control on the stalk. The currant one has a button on the cable at the base, and we need a lamp-poking stick to make it work in the position it's in. And it is leaning against the wall to stay upright...
The sewing tables...
I haven't said much about them so far. I scored a mighty bargain on that ebay thing...
Two Robertson of America large quilting tables, one drawer chest, and a corner desk, for the grand total of £750 plus another £160 in fuel and van hire to get it home. Like the Horn cabinet I got for Bernie the Bernina 1150MDA, they needed a little fettling. The Horn cabinet was £80 for a 1970's version (plus £20 in fuel to collect it), rather than £367 for a new one. Himself adjusted the lift and routed a small bit out of the top to fit Bernie, and it's great in use.
Old set-up, with old dining table:
And the new tables in place:
I totted up the price of buying the American tables new, and cringed! Over £1800 before I paid to import them. Do I care that mine have a gently bodged in Horn lift in one and the original crude mechanical job in the other? or that a bit of the plastic coating was lifting on a drawer? Not a bit! Himself will fit another proper Horn lift into the second table when I can get one, and is cutting suitable templates to fit round various machines out of sample sheets of laminate flooring tiles! The 'tile' side is going on the under side, and the blank base side is the side we will see. No, it won't match the table tops, but hey, for £6 a sheet (out of which we get two drop-ins), and some nifty cutting from Himself, with this I can afford to have two blanks for solid table topping, plus a cut-out for each of the main machines we use: Lily, Erik the Viking, and Nina ther Bernina ("You do know what ther means?"). This and the additional lift will mean we can use all the machines as free-arm or flatbed machines at the push of a machine! Yo! Other machines can also be used as purely table top machines if required. And he glued down the bit of plastic so it won't escape or damage further.
I am slowly wrangling the contents of various wire baskets drawer sets in to the drawers or other storage. I think room will need to be found for the thread tower, but most of the rest of the clobber will eventually go in the cupboards in the conservatory. So far I have made space for the two sewing tables, the Horn cabinet, the two Ikea bin towers, the roll of paper, and the ironing board!
Ikea units moved from here, behind the door:
To here, under the window:
To make space for them and the roll of pattern paper, I had to evict the treadle from the corner, and the crates of boots from the cat door end:
At the moment the boots and treadle are just scudding about in a lackadaisical manner, getting in the way. The massive ironing pile and the over flowing box of hangers are skittering round the living room being a pain. I'll have to see if Himself has time to deal with some of it this evening, but my priority is to swap the desks over. I may take the cutting table down for now, to make more room for the Rubiking.
I'm going to see if we can get one of those things for hanging ironing boards on cupboard walls, and leave that corner free for a hat stand on which to hang customer toiles and unfinished garments. We used to have a rail, but it just became a clothing park! The ironing board can hang on the wall of the larder cupboard behind the other half of the French door.
So, to do the sums...
I spent a total of £1,010 on my tables. The two new ones I originally thought to buy would have cost £1, 004. I'd only have had ONE sewing table for standard machines, and a lot less surface area for supporting sewing. So far, my budget is out by a few quid, not counting getting a second table lift. If I go for that, the budget will go up, but I'll still have an excellent set-up for what we are doing, and there's no real hurry for that second lift if it proves to be a bit more expensive than I'd like.
Meanwhile, on with the dance! I need to wrangle the bits and pieces so they block neither the door nor the catflap, and aren't lying in wait like a furniture flavoured ambush, nipping out with corners to catch us on the ankle or poke legs! The new desk top has already tried to take a bite out of Himself! It got in cahoots with the Dyson, which left a snake of cable underfoot for the unwary...