An unexpected craft room makeover!

Well, the work makeover might be a bit of an overstatement to get your attention . . . more like a rearrange, really.

I used to rearrange my craft room a lot, until I realised that my name is not Doctor Who and my craft room is only a small enclosed veranda and not, in fact, a tardis.

So when I had a new idea, I called Robert in to tell me why it wouldn't work (me - I'm the one with the ideas.  He's the one with the better sense of how things actually fit in a given space).  To my surprise, instead of confirming all the problems I'd thought of, he had solutions to all of them, so it was all systems go!

But what's that? You want to see what my craft room looks like first?  Fair enough. Here's a quick "before" tour:

On the left, here's a desk.  Let's call it the papercrafts desk,  although this desk was wedged into place when we first moved in to this house, long before I'd discovered stamping and scrapbooking.  And when I say "wedged" I mean, a few centimetres had to be trimmed off the sides, a corner cut out of the back and skirting boards removed so that it would fit! I don't think this desk is ever leaving this room!  Robert added the hutch for me later, and the little white shelf where the buttons on came later still.  The drawers only open about half way because the plastic drawer unit sits so close.

About as clean as my desk ever gets!

Straight ahead, we've got a set of drawers and shelves for storage.  Robert made these shelves back when we were first married and too poor to even afford Ikea furniture.  The original configuration had two of the big unit connected by some corner shelves.  The smaller unit was one of two which came later as kitchen storage in our second rental house.  These shelves have been used in my craft room in a variety of different combinations over the years.

To the right, we'll call this desk the sewing desk.  As well as where I do my sewing, this is where Maddy sits when she comes in to do some craft with me.  It's the second desk I've had in that spot, with a slightly larger desktop and more drawers than the last one.  Recently, I decided to move my Silhouette files onto my laptop so that I could use it in my craft room.  I love having it there, but sewing machine, overlocker, laptop and Silhouette . . . that's a lot of work for one little desk!  

Photo taken before Laptop and Silhouette moved in. 

Cue makeover!
 
Before we finish our tour, though, can I draw your attention down, at the revolting carpet.  It wasn't laid properly to begin with, and years of me rolling my chair over it has worn right through.  Every month or so, I've been cutting more chunks of carpet and underlay away.  You can see it best in the photo of the shelves.


Now, if it was just a matter of moving a couple of bits of furniture (and all the boxes and drawers that go with them) I probably would have been finished in time for lunch on Saturday.

But once things were out of the room was a perfect time to wash the windows . . .

. . .scrub the walls with bleach . . .

. . . and is there ever going to be a better time to rip up the revolting carpet?

The bulk of the work took place 2 weekends ago, and since then it's been fine tuning. Plus I took the best part of a week to search for some more plastic drawers to replace the drawer space I'd lost by taking out the sewing desk.

Room reveal time?  Ok!  The desk on the left looks pretty much the same, except a bit of movement on the hutch. And I now have enough room to open the drawers all the way!

In mid-project this time!

 Straight ahead,  instead of the shelves, is an old computer desk we've been procrastinating about what to do with.  In this photo, the laptop and Silhouette are out and in use:

  But when they're not is use:

Hidden away on the sliding keyboard drawer and printer drawer! Nice! 

Finally, to the right, where the sewing desk used to be:

That's where the shelves are now, with a bit of a rearrange of their contents.

So, hardly a glamorous "makeover" but I think a more practical use of the space.  Perhaps one day I'll replace some of the uglier boxes with nicer ones, but that's not on the top of the list for now. 

The one thing I'm really not happy with is the pile of pizza boxes on top of the old computer/new sewing desk. (They contain my current Counterfeit Kit and finished pages I haven't put into albums yet)  I suspect they'll end up under my papercrafts desk, but not until I've worked out what to do with the misting box and other bits and pieces that are there at the moment! 

(Like I said, it's really not a tardis!)