Call me The Transformer: Guest Room into Craft Room

--In previous posts I shared the changes taking place in what has been known in my house as "the other bedroom", the guest room and Brandon's room. It is my pleasure to introduce the room as" My Craft Room", Yea me.

Previous posts showed the wall paper choice, the creation of my work table and the encore for the bookcases and my desk. The final components include my newly purchased Vittsjo shelves, hand painted rug and accessories.

Here are the Vittsjo shelves before :

 

Ikea Vittsjo Shelf

I wasn't going for an industrial look so, I  followed a lot of others before me spray painted mine gold.

I painted the top and bottom shelves white while the others were glass.

Have you seen the wonderful painted rugs all over the internet? I've been really wanting to paint one, so a $5.00 find at the Goodwill was the perfect choice. I mean if  it didn't turn out so great it wouldn't break the bank!

I didn't want my rug to be hard or crunchy, so I mixed latex flat paint with fabric medium in a 2:1 ratio. A couple of tape measures and a roll of painters tape and...   It worked great.

Once the rug was dry, I felt like my room had finally come together.

 I was so excited to get started that I didn't take many ( or good) pics of the room before. Here's a before pic of the room...

And here it is after...

The chair will eventually get another encore, but right now, it's good. I took the cheap mini blind and made a no sew roman shade. Caught a neutral beige cotton on sale at JoAnn's  for about $4.00 (total!), I think I'm going to stencil a design on the valance with the leftover paint from the rug.

 

The bulletin board frame was from a vintage mirror that I bought at The Longest Yard Sale a year ago. I color matched the paint in the wall cover and painted the cork then added a white trim. The shelves allowed me to display my elephant collection that goes back some years. I also made the "M " and the "B" bookends. Watch for more like them in my Etsy shop soon.

Don't know what you think but, I LOVE it. Let me know what you think!!

Encore for Desk and Bookcases

The next projects on the way to finishing my craft room were my desk and bookcases.

Here's my desk before it's encore:

    Actually, I had started the encore before I took a "Before" picture. So imagine it with two holes in the front.

 I guessed it was the wonky leg that led to this desk being on the curb. All it took was an allen wrench and it was fixed! The 2 small drawers were missing and I had planned to make new ones, but never got around to it. After 4 years I decided to just cover the holes instead of making drawers. I bought a paint can grid at Home Depot for less than $4.00.

I used tin snips to cut the frame off and cut this grid down the middle. With the addition of some wood trim I "finished" these holes.

Next I gave the desk a quick sanding and then primed and painted the desk .

Still have to hide those cords!

In addition to the desk,  the short bookcases got an encore as well..

After a quick sanding..

Primed and painted. On to the 2nd one.

I also made a new bulletin board. I used a vintage frame that I bought at the Longest Yard Sale a couple of years ago. I matched the aqua in the wall covering and painted the cork board. To dress it up a little I added a white ribbon trim.

There's more to come as I totally transform this room. 

 

A Double Hack - Ikea and West Elm !!

Hi everybody,

It's been awhile , but I've been so busy with work (don't you hate it when work gets in the way.) and redesigning my 3rd bedroom  into an everyday craft room.

I've given my desk an encore as well as some bookcases, more about that coming up.

My next project, I know this is way out of order but...

I decided to complete a Double Hack, an Ikea hack and a West Elm hack!!
The inspiration for this hack was found at  West Elm. It's their 2 x 2 Console Desk. Pictured below.

When I looked at this desk, I saw 4 Ikea Lack tables and an Ikea table top!!
So, off I went to Ikea to get the Lack tables and a white table top.
                           

Ikea Linnom table top

Ikea Lack table

                                                               

Here are the Lack tables. 

The underside of the tables had to be painted as they would be visible.

I used these to attach the 2 tables to each other.

Here she is. Can't you just see yourself using all this wonderful work space. Ignore the mess on the floor, this room is under construction!!

 I  decided to trim 1" off all of the legs. I wanted my work table to be tall enough to use as a cutting table for sewing too, so I decided on a finished height of 35". 

Here she is.  The West Elm desk is currently on sale , it was $349 and is now $199.

It's 60w x18d x 30h. Not a bad deal right?

My table is 48w x 25d x 35h for a total of $69.00. 

Finished look

I decided to use 2 different size plastic containers. I didn't want to have to dig around in 4 large containers that were just "buckets" so I used some smaller ones too. To help organize the items in my containers, I used foam board from the dollar store and made dividers for the smaller containers. I was able to choose the size of the compartments within each container. Ones has 16 sections for lots of smaller common items!

Foam board dividers in the making.

When fully packed this container will hold the zillions of bottles of acrylic paint, organized by color!!

Stay tuned for the next installment on As the Room Turns ( into something useful and beautiful).