If you have been following my blog, you may have seen that I started a craft room makeover. I actually moved my work space into my office, and my craft room will now be used for storage. I'm also trying to do this on a budget. You can see part 1 of the makeover here.
This has been a really long and difficult project, with a huge amount of hard work. Each part of the process seemed to generate more work as I would see more that had to be done. At first I was just going to change my office work space and make it into my craft work space, but that showed me that I absolutely had to clean out my craft room and convert it to easily accessible craft storage. It's just hard to imagine how much stuff I had accumulated. My only excuse is that I worked 7 years at a fine art rubber stamp store, and I also taught some classes.
Here is part of the South wall of my former craft room now
As a reminder, this was the same space before:
As another reminder from my other post, below is my newly created craft workspace that is in my shared office at the front of the house.
I like it all so much better now! The old large desk area was not optimal for storage, and so everything was just out in the open and besides being messy and disorganized, it did not inspire me to be creative. The difference is now I have storage for all of my tools and supplies, and I have gotten rid of things I don't need and won't use.
I had to clean everything off the desk, and also off of the shelf above the desk. The shelf was taken down and shortened by quite a lot.
Some of my household members helped by closely inspecting each step of the work. Above is Alaska, cat princess. After all of the desk pieces were removed, the wall was repaired and two drawer sets that I had previously purchased were assembled and put into the corner.
I did all of the sorting, difficult decisions, and moving craft supplies around; but my son and husband did all the hard physical labor, taking the old desk out and assembling and setting up the new pieces. Thank goodness for their help.
See the suitcase that says "Laugh Out Loud" sitting on the larger set of drawers? That contains all of my Hasty Lace stuff, and I'm never giving up any of it. I just have never had a good place to put this case until now. It fits perfectly right there. A piece of shelf will go over it.
The Ikea Kallax pieces were finally in stock at Ikea, and they were brought in and assembled.
The lower cubes seemed to meet with approval of the inspectors. I chose one Kallax section with 4 cubes x 4 cubes, and one with 2 cubes x 4 cubes. This created a wall of cubes that are 6 high by 4 wide. All of these pieces are well attached to the wall.
Do you see the space between the new Kallax units and an existing piece to the right? It's just over 5" wide.
I found this little rolly cart (on Amazon) that is 5.1" wide and it fits ALL of my sprays. I would probably not normally get a cart this tall and narrow because it's a bit tippy, but it fits right into that space and is perfect for holding the sprays. I only need to pull it out a little to reach sprays in the back.
The shelf that was once over the desk in the craft room was cut up and used in a couple of places
One piece still holds a small stereo and a DVD player for the TV
Some of the shelf pieces are being used to expand storage above the drawers
I was so happy to move all of my paper colors to once place where I could put them in rainbow order. One whole row of the Kallax is taken up with paper. I used to have it in a couple of places in the room.
Before the Kallax pieces were available, I lined the cardstock up in my dining room, putting it in rainbow order with the neutrals at the end. Each type of cardstock is in job ticket holders, and organized in magazine files. I learned this storage method from Jennifer McGuire.
I made less changes to the North wall of the room, but some of the things that were here went into the boxes in the Kallax, and I re-sorted some other things. Overall it looks much better, at least to me.
Most of my stamps are in the bins on the shelves shown above. I have unmounted almost all of them. I have them sorted by category. The ones I couldn't bear to unmount (especially my Fred Mullett stamps) are on the picture shelves above the couch.
All of the boxes in the Kallax unit are now labeled. I first put a piece of acetate on the cardboard boxes and then put the label onto the acetate. That's so if things change (which they always do), I can change the label for that box without damaging the box.
I chose black and white boxes because there were not any colored boxes that I liked at my Ikea. I didn't want to use all black or all white because it would look like a monolith. My plans are to make artworks for most of the boxes that will correspond to what is in the box, to break up the monotone look of the boxes. That will be done as future projects.
I was asked to say what things I got rid of during this process. I got rid of about half of the scissors that were in the box I showed you in the last post about this project. I also got rid of some stamps and dies; various tools, markers and inks. In some cases, this was due to duplicates, but also things I know I won't use again. Out is the large circular pencil holder that sat on my desk, as well as my kit I used to take to class. One heat gun is also out, as I have too many for just me.
A friend who has inspired me to clean things out has described the process as being like peeling the layers of an onion. This project was really just the first layer. One of the things that helps is to get all "like" things in the same place.
Doing this made me realize things like that I have 6 powder tools (the tool that you use when you are going to heat emboss and you want to prevent getting embossing powder where you don't want it). I also have 4 of the old fashioned type of stamp alignment tool. (I don't need these as much now that I use the MISTI tool, but I will probably keep one of these for aligning wood stamps and other techniques). I know I have these extras because I once taught classes, but since I don't plan to teach in the future, it's time to get rid of some of my duplicates. I'm not even sure why I have so many stylus tools and brayers. I haven't gotten rid of all of these things yet, but that's definitely going to be part of the second layer of cleaning out.
I did a lot of cleaning out in the closet of the craft room. I'm not showing it now, but I was happy that I cleaned everything off the floor of the closet, and I can get to pretty much everything in there. There are still 3 shelves that I need to clean out, but that will be for layer 2. I will collect some pictures and maybe do one more post to show you if you like.
I'm super happy with how things have turned out for this project so far. I love my workspace now. It's easy to work there and easy to put things away afterward, so it actually stays pretty clean. Here's a final picture that I think is funny.
This is a rack that my husband once made for me to hold washi tape. I outgrew it some time ago and I only had unloved, rather ugly washi tape on it (those also went out) and it just sat on my former desk, unused. It now has a new life in the kitchen as a drying rack for washed zip lock bags. Perfect right?
