Anyone use their loft for hobbies/craft/sewing?

I was up in our loft yesterday wading through bags of baby clothes and it occured to me that there is quite a lot of space up there, it it weren't for the huge amount of stuff I have hoarded up there. I realised that if I was ruthless and decluttered I could maybe have a permanent sewing area up there.

We can't afford to do a loft conversion at the moment, so I would literally be using the bare loft, but I,ve got some ideas about hanging up some fabric to make it more cosy and to keep the dust down. We have lighting up there already (eventually we'd add some velux windows).

I've read that you should strengthen the floor, but to be honest, my sewing stuff would weigh much less than the piles of junk up there already. Eventually we want to do the loft properly but i can't see that happpening for at least 5 years. But in the mean time, I can see the potential for a make-shift sewing area that would mean I could keep all my machines out all the time. My sewing mojo is returning and I dream of having a sewing room of my own.

Anyone else done this? Any thoughts/ideas?

@Frances I have been ing over the pics of your loft sewing room.

We have a good sized loft, and it's boarded and carpeted down the centre part (not directly in the eaves). When we first moved in, we used it as a game room - had a tv up there and the games console(s) lived up there. Then the 'clutter' started taking over, plus J bought a massive tv for gaming, so we moved it all down to the sitting room!

I know a lot of people who have boarded their loft for light use only so it might be possible until you get a proper conversion done

this is exactly what I wanted to hear I'm so motivated to get the loft sorted now. I might be able to get my sewing room without moving house or turfing one of the kids out of their bedroom If it works well then I might set up the other end as a music room so I can get the drum kit, keyboard and guitars out of ds1's bedroom. We could maybe set-up the scalextric track too.

Oooo I'm excited. :dance:

When we were 8-9 my dad divided our loft into 2 halves, one left as traditional loft storage space, the other half he boarded (just thin chipboard) and carpeted with off cut - just tacked it down himself & we had it as a playroom so we could leave Lego, Playmobil, Sylvanians etc set up all the time

My dad boarded ours out, and insulated it is he could put HIS train set up there, which had previously lived in the old shed! He's not happy with it so he's tarting it up, heaven knows what he's going to do with it

Did you do anything to line the roof/ceiling? It's just bare rafter and felt up there at the moment. We don't have any spare money to do anything like plasterboarding etc but I've got loads of plain white fabric that I thought I could stapled up to line the roof to make it look a bit nicer and to keep dust etc from the roofing felt falling on my sewing stuff.

The loft is already completely boarded out which is great

@fivefourfour @emmab16 @zoeyboo

Dad just stapled/tacked some very thin flexible board between the beams/roof struts & we then put posters up I think thin board would insulate more than fabric if you could do that yourself?

But if too expensive I'm sure fabric would do fine x

My dad got a bit carried away with ours & spent a lot insulating it, but you could get away with thin board like zoey said & then cover that with white fabric/ posters to brighten it up?