A dream that has been forming in my head for a long time is finally coming true. I have a craft room. Well not a room. A corner of the room dedicated just for making all my silly stuff.
Before the glamor shots, a little history. I did not start regularly crafting until I was in collage working on my degree in graphic design. I started to crochet crazy then. I had a good yarn stash in various plastic shopping bags under my dorm room bed. Then when I “grew up” and got an apartment everything was shoved into a cedar lines chest my grandfather made me. Now I love that chest. I loved the idea of keeping my materials for making hand made stuff in something so wonderfully hand made. But I had to sit on it to close it and that was with bags of roving and my new sewing machine not even on the inside. There was just no way I could continue to use it.
So it was time to put the interior design books and all the great photos I have seen in the craft room flickr pool to good use. I knew I would need a table for my machine and lots of storage. So my husband and I started a hunt for a table. After looking around lots of stores and not finding what I wanted. Then we got lucky at Kudzu Antiques in Decatur Georgia and found a great old metal table. After loading it onto our truck we made a happy discovery – the table top was slate. Ooh swanky. The top had a mysterious epoxy company sticker on it and it needed some cleaning and fresh paint on the metal but that is not a big deal.
Now that I had a work surface I needed a place to put all my goodies. Now I have two cats that love wool and cotton, they seem to ignore the acrylic. More than once I have found a very long trail of yarn wrapping around my old apartment. And they also figured out that spools of thread make a really cool sound on the hardwoods… Have I learned my lesson and stopped leaving yarn around? No. But I have learned that cats can only jump so high.
So overhead storage was a must. But being short, 5’3”, I needed overhead storage that I could pull down to a height. I had been eyeing a set of cubes at target for a while but I needed to find shelves first. Ikea to the rescue with bjärnum wall brackets that are 11” deep, they that is the same size as the cubes, how nice. Oh and look there is a bored the same length as the table, even better.
Now for pegboard. Just a good thing all around to have if you have lots of little tools. Target saved me again with a great pegboard for indoor use made of a pure white plastic with cute hooks and mini shelves that fit. The pegboard was also in16” squares so it would be easy to install on a normal home. But I live in a house made in the mid 50’s and after putting up several shelves my husband and I decided that the construction guys eyeballed where the studs should be because not a single one is 16”. With the pegboard I can keep my tools out and I just love that I can have a jar of eyes handing on the wall.
Putting the whole thing together was fun at times but other times it was a real pain. 50-year-old wood does not take to kindly to having a screw put in it. We also marked up the wall real good, which led to a half-hour of erasing.
Ok so here are the final glamor shots.
Too bad it will never be this pretty again.