A Bigger, Better Sewing Table

Mez 3.0 has sort of evolved into an entire redesign of the studio. The house projects spreadsheet has the majority of the details, but the big effort here was designing a murphy desk to use for craft work (mostly, sewing work).

I used floorplancreator.net to scope out measurements of the studio. Because this would be such a multipurpose space, I needed to be sure that every inch of it would be accounted for and would work well together. I also made use of my handy Measure a Thing Then Put Tape on The Floor and Wall to Scope Out The Size trick to make sure walking paths were as realistic as I needed them to be between tight spaces.

The goal was to take the studio space and turn it into both a home office space as well as a functional craft space.

For the office, I would need:

• Desk. Not a lot of desk space would be needed, but I would need a standing desk and it would need to be somewhat narrow. I also wanted it to be sturdy enough to have my monitor clamped to it.
• Shelving. Above the desk would need to be shelves for the majority of my office supplies, electronic equipment, and camera gear.

On the craft side, I would need:

• Folding table. Not an inherently tricky thing in and of itself, but made tricky by the fact that I had space limitations and also wanted this folding table to be a permanent structure, not something I could fold up and put in a closet. I also wanted it to be a fairly high working height (~40“) with a nice smooth surface for fabric needs.
• Storage. Again, not a tricky thing on the surface. What makes it tricky is that I wanted some kind of storage cabinet that the table would either mount to or inside of. My vision was of a murphy bed, but as a desk. But *big.*

The office side of things is not very interesting. I chose a desk off Amazon, I got some shelves from Ikea. Fun.

However, here is the process for the murphy work table.

I considered a few different routes when designing the wall cabinet portion of the craft table. A dresser that the table leaves could just rest on top of, a clothes wardrobe that could open to reveal the leaves inside waiting to unfold.I wanted something that could give me a lot of storage options for all my crafting tools that I would want on hand while I was working at the table, while also having a very small footprint. This translated to - as much wallspace as possible (height, width) while not being very deep.

I played with a few different IKEA modular storage solutions and settled on the IVAR collection, the pine based wooden one. I liked how open the pieces are - the side pieces that the boards fit into are entirely open sided, and don't appear big and bulky. The studio is already a very small space, so the more open airy-ness I can allow it, the better. The IVAR collection is also quite narrow and I went with the model that is only 12” deep to then give myself as much work table surface as possible.

You can navigate to IKEA's website and search for code “K6DF2D” which will pull up the design planner I used to put together my storage unit that would become the base of the table. Nifty. I did have to piecemeal my components from them together a bit - as of Summer 2022, we're facing supply chain issues around the globe. The shelves needed for this structure aren't in stock, but I can gradually order them as they are available.

Using the floor plan creator, I scoped out the maximum size I could allow myself for a work table, taking into account the width of the cabinet it would be mounted to. I knew I needed the table leaves to be light enough that once they were folded and secured to the cabinet, there wouldn't be significant strain on the hardware holding it there - BUT, that it needed to be sturdy enough that it could sustain the load of things like my 1970s sewing machine, general cutting, weight bearing, usage, etc.

I settled on an engineered wood desktop from Amazon. These measure 48“x26” (the wall cabinet's width is 52“). Doubled up, the finished work table size will be 48”x52“. Noice.

I also needed hardware to make this work:

• Legs. These legs adjust to 39” high. Along with the 1“ thick desk surface, plus the ~1” mounting block that will be required for the leg hinges (see below), this is more than enough to get me to the working surface height I need.
• Locks. These locks will keep the table leaves up and in place when the table is fully closed.
• Leaf hinges. I was lucky that I already had the sort of hinges that would be required for the kind of folding action I needed from this table. They were hardware that was on the dining room table I originally bought to have in this house, but which I eventually dismantled for Mez 2.0
• Leg hinges. These hinges will allow for the legs to be folded up against he leaves when the table is in it's stored position. They lock in place, so no worries about them unintentionally falling when the leaves are up.