The Craft Room Makeover

 Here is the ugly truth of the Craft Room Before:

Stuff everywhere, too much stuff, 1 too-small table, 1 too-big table, 2 new pieces of furniture for the new layout all stuffed into a small "den" sized room.

It was claustrophobic and I couldn't craft in there. And people coming over for Corey's birthday was my motivation to get moving on the transformation that I had been meaning to do for months.

The plan for the transformation is to create an area for me and an area for Corey. My area is broken up into a sewing desk and a paper-crafting desk.  Corey is still figuring out what he wants to do with his area.

I bought 2 storage pieces at Ikea and had already reorganized stuff out of my old plastic drawers into the new pieces back in September.

I got an Alex drawer unit for the sewing area. The top 2 drawers having sewing stuff (thread, needles, small scraps, patterns), 1 has all the letters & postcards that I've ever gotten, 1 is old photos, and 1 is my Drawer of Technology that holds chargers, cords, old cell phones, camera cases etc.

I also got a Helmer drawer unit for the paper-crafting area to hold scissors, gluesticks, paper, stamps, ink, craft paint etc.

I had already bought the 2 new pieces at Ikea, so the next step was spray painting my old file cabinet white to match them.  The top file drawer has all my high school & college files that I am keeping and the bottom one has all adult stuff like taxes, insurance, house stuff etc.

I've had this since junior high and $0 is nice on the budget. I used the white appliance spray paint that I had originally bought for a redo on a used garage freezer, but then it broke and we bought a brand new one instead. So I was happy to have a use for this already paid for spray paint.

Before:

During:

After:

I got lucky because I got this done on the last nice warm day in November. It doesn't look perfect, but it looks way better and it's f-r-e-e.

Here is the room after I sorted & decluttered, with the wrong sized tables out of the room, and the 3 new pieces in place and 1 temporary place holder in place:

The plastic drawer unit has all my fabric in it and I am going to build a new piece to hold it all in a better way. But until I do the plastic drawer unit is there.

The corner is still a mess. Some of it will go in the last piece that I still need to build, and lots of it will go into the not-yet-built living room bookcases one day. And I also want to build some window seating/storage in the two corners at some point.

The desktops are oak veneer plywood cut to size.  I attempted to match them to the wood trim stain like I did with the coat hooks.

Pre-stain, post-wood conditioner:

Post-stain:

Wiping off:

All done:

And in place in the Craft Room:

The sewing area (machine under desk because plastic drawers can't take any weight

The paper-crafting area

It is so luxurious to have two separate crafting areas!  


Still to do in here:

• build the wooden fabric storage piece to replace the plastic drawers
• add some sort of quarter round to the desktops for a more finished look
• add shelving on the walls above the desks
• redo Corey's corner

Still to do in the next round at some point:

• refinish the wood floors under the carpet
• build window seats/storage in the corners
• make roman shades for the windows
• buy my way-too-expensive dream desk chair on a fabulous sale and wheel it back and forth between my two areas on our refinished wood floors

Since getting the Craft Room to this point I have already finished a quilt!  It's so nice to be able to be in there and have it feel so open.  I am glad it's usable now because I have quite a few homemade Christmas presents to work on!