It has been an extremely long path getting to a finished craft room.
Pretty much everything in this room was constructed by my husband and myself. I'll share more details in the coming days, but I'm excited to share a few before and after pictures...
This is what the room looks like NOW:
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| I'll start with one of my favorite parts of the sewing room: my grandmother's scissors. She was a seamstress, and I think I have sewing + creativity in my genes. |
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| Rolling craft table, rolled up to the counter of the cabinet. |
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| This cabinet is a BEAST. It's 97" long and has amazing storage! |
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| I had made a computer desk previously and it had no drawers, ultimately, I NEED STORAGE DRAWERS! |
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| I am also pile things, so my hope is I can keep on top of that pile on the left (pray for me?) |
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| This is the view across from the window, the glass door to the left goes into our foyer (currently a disaster) and the doorway on the right goes into our son's room. |
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| The upper fabric storage is MY take on an antique mail sorter, just enormous! My husband built that beast in ONE day! He's the best! The lower cabinet started it's life as a computer desk that I abandoned. It sat, collecting cobwebs in our garage until I decided to adapt it into a cabinet to hold my printers! ALSO, my previous desk had ZERO storage, and I wanted a place to store our files, so this has worked perfectly. |
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| One of the first projects in this room was the closet. These door organizers add so much organized, easy access, storage! |
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| I am finally able to have my gift wrap IN the craft room (it used to be in a closet!) |
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| Inside this closet we added shelves along the left and right side, and kept the center open to hold this rolling Silhouette cart, it is the PERFECT height to roll up to my computer desk when I'm cutting with my Silhouette. Above my Silhouette is my embroidery unit for my sewing machine. I also keep a tall ladder to quickly grab fabric OR high bins from the closet. |
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| Rolling Silhouette Cart |
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| These gorgeous peonies are THE MOST BEAUTIFUL. I literally moved them around the room so they could be given ALL THE GLORY! Aren't they gorgeous?! |
One of the hidden stars of this new, updated room is the closet storage. The previous unit that we tore out was really minimal (and meant for clothing) the new updated version has TWO really high shelves, for items that I don't need frequently, but are nice to have on hand...
Realistically, my plan for my sewing area will look more like this--with my sewing machine out on the large rolling cart. I may also try to purchase a cutting mat to cover this entire cutting surface area.
And I'm slightly HORRIFIED to show you what this room looked like before. It was such a mish-mash of making things work (terribly?) and using what we had to make it work. It wasn't really meeting my needs and it was just CONSTANT chaos. We had purchased inexpensive Target shelves, I think for $30 each, and a mix and match situation of items we had to be used in my craft room. About 5 years ago I built a new sewing table, but ultimately the apron was a little deep and it made it hard for my legs to fit under the table while sewing. Sometimes it's not worth making-do for a second longer.
Prepare yourself, take a Xanax, especially you OCD types this is ugly:
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| printer area (the other printer was in our foyer) with paper storage beneath, and the laminator next to the printer, and Silhouette cutting mats in the drawer. Closet, exploding with random items. |
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| Craft table (antique from my great uncle) but with abandoned projects and things that needed to be put away |
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| To be fair, I started organizing bins in the middle of the floor WHILE quilting a t-shirt quilt, I assure you the room was a mess already, but the added chaos is the quilting... |
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| Old computer, meet new computer--previously the computers lived in our foyer on the desk with no storage |
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| All of my craft/fabric storage was on these three target bookshelves that I purchased in our old house. They felt really small for this room (with really high ceilings) one shelf broke in the move, but I used it for five more years...I sold these on facebook marketplace and now they are living a good life somewhere else. |
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| As I emptied, everything made it's way into our foyer, and then into our attic that I had emptied last fall. |
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| This is after the bookshelves were removed, but lots of craft junk remained |
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| Sorting and thinning out craft junk |
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| the hallway into my sons' room stored craft items I anticipated needing during the project. |
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| The original closet before being torn out |
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| closet after tearing out the shelves (5 months ago in JANUARY!) |
And just so you aren't left with nightmares, just remember what it looks like now:
This room is TRULY a mixture of hard work, following instructions, and creativity. I am so thankful for my husband's help. We DID hire someone to install the two light fixtures, and in my opinion, it was COMPLETELY worth it. This entire project was SEVEN large handmade items. Our home was in chaos for about 5 (almost 6) months, so also thank you to my children, who tolerated my big mess, and to anyone who entered my door, for not judging me by the mess inside! I'll share more details about my vision, the building plans we used, etc. in the coming weeks.
