Studio re-painted and re-configured

I was having some interior painting done this spring, and decided to freshen up my studio, last painted about 25 years ago. I changed the color from a peachy-tan to light gray, which came out well. And since I had to move the furniture around anyway for the painter, I took the time to make a scale-model plan of the room, playing with the positioning of the furniture.  I discovered that if I swapped the positions of the sewing table and the cutting table, I gained enough space on the north wall (where the cutting table is in the photo above (green mat on the table) that I could move my fabric storage cabinet (aka filing cabinet) far enough from the wall that I could get in there to actively use the design wall at that end. (It doesn't look like enough space below, but it is.)   

The big change I made was that I expanded the width of the flannel-covered design wall by 16" so that it takes up the full width of the wall. I also improved the design wall by using duct tape to tape together the foam insulation panels, which I'd previously just nailed up side by side. And I covered the whole thing with flannel (and a layer of cotton underneath that) before nailing the wall up, so I have a taut, smooth surface. Much better than my old one, where I had just tacked flannel to the surface of the panels, which meant pretty loose flannel, as you can see towards the bottom of this photo from a couple of years ago.

I also bought a blue Ikea Raskog utility cart to put near the ironing board, a great place to store my spritzer bottles and other odds and ends:

In fact, I got two of them, one for downstairs, to corral my embroidery projects/supplies, so that they're not spread across the dining room table.

Many thanks to David for helping me out with the construction and mounting of the design wall, and for doing all the assembly on the utility carts.  I told him I thought the design wall would take us about an hour, but it took us more like 4 or 5!