Quest for a new Hobby Area

OK, before my big plans for a fresh start come the new year (see last post) can flourish, I need a new hobby area.

I figure instead of simply carting my woefully inadequate hobby desk into the new space, it's a great opportunity to revamp my working area.

So I've drawn up a list of everything I've ever wanted or needed from my hobby desk, which I'm going to incorporate into my new area.

1. Obviously I need a surface to work on

2. A place to tidy away my paints, brushes, glues, etc, away from marauding kittens and little hands (my first kid is due in march, so this is especially important)

3. Shelves to display finished projects and store current WIP's

4. Storage for my many bitz boxes (I have nearly ten years worth of these, which number in the dozens), or at least a way to categorise the bitz for easy access

5. A decent lighting set up

6. Noticeboard to store ideas, army lists, sketches and painting recipes

7. Space for my laptop (i need music, videos and access to the blogosphere when i work), but far enough from the working area to avoid splashes and spillages

8. (although optional, due to space restraints) A light box for photographing models

9. Storage for all my old projects that I've thought I'd abandoned but could switch back to at a moments notice


It's fairly basic stuff, but every bit of it's important for me, seeing as i only have about half this list in my current kitten-infested set up and if I'm going to make this change, I'm going to do this properly.

While this seems simple enough, I also only have a small space to work in, so all this also needs to be quite compact.

I'm going shopping tomorrow to see what i can pick up and hopefully by the end of the weekend i should have something that's at least starting to resemble the idea I have in my head.