My Hobby Room, A Virtual Tour of a small space.

The Evolution of my Hobby Space

When I first started building models, I kept my supplies in a shoe box, and did my building on the dining room table.  I didn't have a lot of extra cash at the time, so I would stop by the hobby shop, just about every weekend when we were out and about, and buy a new tool for myself, or a bottle of paint, for larger items such as models I would save up for a couple of weeks or so.  (at this time I was working a 4 day work week, which was why I had extra time to fill).

After about a year I was working out of a couple of shoe boxes, and after saving a little extra, I bought the yellow and black roll around shop toolbox you see against the back wall of the closet.  It was perfect for storing my paint, tools, supplies, and builds in progress.  I kept it in the closet, and rolled it out when I was building.  I was still working on the dining room table though and I was starting to dislike putting things away and getting them back out.  I couldn't just go build for a few minutes and move on to something else, then return without a lot of effort.  This went on for about a year, by this time I had gotten another better job and was looking to get into airbrushing.  I could foresee the need for more storage space.

Then one day we were having a spring cleaning of the apartment.  We were changing some things around, getting rid of a lot of stuff, and just seeing what we had stored where.  As a part of this process we had completely emptied the dining room closet out.  This was where I kept my tool box also.  I was just sitting there looking at the space and an idea started forming in my head.  I measured the closet and it was 4 feet by 3 feet.  I thought to myself that’s 12 square feet of useable space.

I pushed my toolbox in against the back wall and it fit well,  I looked around and saw a Sauder 5 shelve bookcase we were going to get rid of.  I took it apart, measured twice, and started cutting and building.  Next thing I knew I had a desk against the back wall.  And it was perfect because it left just enough space for me to sit and work. I had a few bits of the shelving left so I started in and mounted the shelf over the desk and to the side for storage. And that was the start of my first dedicated hobby room.

Over a period of several years I have modified and tweaked my closet into what it is today.  I got some wood scrap from a cabinet shop down the block and made the shelves over the desk to hold stuff that I use most.  I added a couple of plastic pull drawer style storage bins on the walls.  Added plastic drawer units on the shelves in order to organize and store more stuff.  I replaced the orignal wooden desk leg with the door off of an old vhs cabinet to add even more usable storage.  To tell the truth sometimes even I am amazed at the amount of stuff I have stored in my little room.

And the best thing of all I had my own space to build models in, and nowadays I can go in build for 10 minutes or whatever and go away for a while knowing that I can come back and work some more without any hassle.

Well I hope that if you have got this far in my rambling story, that you found it interesting with what you can do with small spaces.