Paper Castle

Hi everyone. It’s been quite a while since I last blogged.  I was laid up for a week with a nasty cold and even nastier laryngitis and then I was working on my craft room makeover.

So, want to see what I’ve been doing? and how I went from this:

to this, in 8 days:

I think it’s only been a month since the last makeover.  Really, I need to find better things to do than move my stuff around LOL

I’ve been on a foam board kick recently and I made so many step shelves that it was looking like I wasn’t going to need all my cubes anymore.  I was even And THEN I discovered Pinterest! After spending literally days browsing around I found this!

I didn’t have shelves like the ones in the photo, but I had a boat load of cubes!

That was all it took.  I was on a mission! I could already see the finished room in my head.

I also thought that now was the perfect time to move forward with this project because our furnace up and died on us.  It’s winter here.  It’s kind of cold.  My house was kind of cold. 5 degrees F cold.  We had no heat for two and a half days. So, tackling a physical job like this went a long way to keeping warm.

When I look at other peoples’ blogs and pictures of their makeover rooms, you don’t get to see a lot of the chaos that a makeover creates. I’m going to take you through my last week and what I’ve been doing and what it takes to do a makeover of this magnitude.

The first thing I had to do was decide what to use as my table top surface.  The photo sample above uses 2 unfinished doors that were primed and painted.  They look fantastic but I didn’t like the idea of the center seam.  So, I called up my father in law and had him come with me to the lumber store where I picked up a 4’ x 8’ sheet of 5/8” one side finished plywood.

Hard to believe this is going to become a beautiful craft table huh?

My craft room was already jammed full with a mish mash of mismatched stuff, and the thought of figuring out where to start was more than a little overwhelming.

I decided to start by making more room to move on the back wall.  There were two 3’ x 7’ tables and one 2’ x 6’ table.  I am downsizing to one 2’ x 6’ table and another 2’ x 4’ table to form a more moderate sized computer area.

But, first, I had to clear the old tables off. Look at all the stuff that’s on those tables!  Where do you suppose it all went while I pulled the tables out? It went on the floor at the other end of the room and anywhere else I could find room to put stuff.  There was so much that I knew it wasn’t going to be easy keeping enough space to drag the big tables out as well as leaving enough room to build my new craft table.

Here’s the first phase of the makeover. I was so focused on the cat claiming her corner that I forgot to take a picture of the whole wall LOL  Anyways, this ended up in the back left corner and the right hand corner remains empty for the time being.

Next came the fun part. I have 27 cubes.  It took a couple of hours just to figure what was going to be the best arrangement.  It was very much like rearranging the living room.  How many times do you push furniture around before you find an arrangement that you like?  I stacked and restacked and re restacked the cubes. 

Once that was done, I measured the distance from the wall to make sure they were lined up straight. It’s REALLY hard to nudge these things on carpet.  I had a few choice words for the ones that wouldn’t slide easily.

When I was done and I was mostly happy, I called my husband to help put the plywood on top.  Oh this was exciting!!! I was finally going to see how my table was going to look and it was exactly as I had imagined it.  It was beautiful!

I used clamps to help me square it all up.  This was good for at least another hour of pushing and shoving and more nudging. I wanted to make sure I had comfortable space on all sides for walking around it and also to make sure that it wasn’t too close to my computer area.

I had just about finished filling the table top up with other things when my father in law, George, called to tell me that he found a piece of arborite for me.  Oh happy day! This was really great news because I hadn’t figured out what I was going to do to finish the plywood yet.  Plain paint would have made it look pretty, but I didn’t think that things would slide across it the way I wanted them to, such as sliding a piece of cardstock out of the way.  There’s nothing more annoying and aggravating than paper that won’t slide. I also didn’t think that paint would endure over time.

So, now I had to clear it all off. It all went onto the floor with everything else. It was really piling up!  But, I wasn’t smart enough to take a picture of that!

The next morning George was at my door picking up my beloved plywood. I went over the next day to help him put the arborite on.  The arborite was a mystery.  We didn’t know what colour it was.  I was just so darn happy that he found some that I didn’t really care what colour it was.  It could have been orange for all I cared! LOL Here’s George hard at work.  Isn’t he awesome?!

This is the arborite we ended up with.  I totally love it! The colours are perfect for my space.  So neutral that it’ll always look OK with any colour I paint the walls later on.

While the glue was curing, I headed back home to continue working on my room. There were shelves to hang and things to organize.  All the stuff that was on the floor had to get organized onto the new shelves.  Off to the Home Depot I went to buy what I needed to hang shelves.

Yay!  It’s shelf hanging time!

This is the corner beside the new location for the computer.  On the right back wall. I was lucky that I already had two 96” pieces of melamine shelving and I used those on one wall and hung several shorter shelves on the neighbouring wall.

It took a couple of hours to get this all set up in a way that would be workable for me.  It’s also like arranging a living room.  Every time I tried something else, I had to take it all down and start over.  In the end, I set it up so that the things I use most frequently, were nearest to the table.

Next it was time for the wall on the other side of the room.

This one took a little longer because I had to make a foam board step shelf to hold my CD cases with all my stamps. So I hung the rails then waited for George to bring my table top back. The foam board shelf is 71” long and 5” tall.  It’ll be a while before the entire shelf is full of stamps. This is the framework of the shelf and then the finished shelves.

Once that was done, I could turn my attention back to the table top.

After it was put into place, we noticed that the plywood wasn’t flat anymore.  So, in order to correct that we turned it over and attached two 2” x 4”s and tried it again.  It was flat now, but, the ends of the 2” x 4”s were visible and I knew this was going to drive me insane if I didn’t do something about it.  So, my husband hatched this idea about making a frame that will fit inside the gap between the cabinets and the table.  We talked about it and agreed that it was a good idea.  I got to work and he went for a nap. LOL

See?  The studs show!

I built a frame for each corner of the front side of the table and screwed it to the bottom of the table top.

After that was done, I took off to the Home Depot again to find some finishing trim.  I ended up with the standard trim that you see in apartments and rental properties.  I bought the pre-primed stuff to save myself a bit of time later on.

Once I got it all home, I had to cut it.  It was the first time I got to use my new compound mitre slider saw and it was also my first time cutting mitered edges.  I only did one wrong.  Pretty good I thought.

My husband went and brought down the air compressor and air nailer for me and I set about attaching my trim. In an effort to make sure the trim would not get ripped off accidentally, I add some glue before nailing the trim on. I know it says “no more nails” . . . but I didn’t quite believe them. LOL  I added finishing nails!

I nailed it to the frame that I built in the previous step so then I didn’t have to worry about damaging the edges of the table top itself.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished trim in white.  It looked real nice and clean but I thought it didn’t contrast well enough with the table top and the cabinets.  So I painted it a nice cinnamon. I think it looks so much nicer and gives it a more polished and professional look.

I spent the next 3 and a half days tidying up and organizing.  I finally finished it today.  Sunday.  Exactly one week after starting.

Here are the rest of the pictures of the room.

My next project is converting this back wall into a clock.  I have all the clock parts but I don’t have the numbers yet.  I have to make stencils and learn how to use my scroll saw. But just imagine that the wall is the clock face.  How cool is that gonna be huh?

I’m still thinking about what to do with this wall.

This is a foam board cabinet that I had lying around and I decided to make drawers for it with clear fronts.  I really like that the contents are well contained and clearly visible.

Just some other foam board shelves I made recently.

Now, I know I’ve said a bazillion times that this is the last time I’ll move my stuff around, but I really think that I mean it this time. LOL

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my new crafty space as much as I’ve enjoyed showing it to you.

 

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