This House is CUH-LEAN!!!

Last weekend I kicked ass in the craft room - it is now clean and organized, and ready for

1. painting
2. shelves hung on the wall
3. cutting table build & install
4. *decent* pics with actual camera instead of just my phone...sorry...

Waaaaay Before & Somewhat Recently:

north wall - a bunch of crap on a bunch of ugly shelves

piles of stuff! everywhere! FAIL!!!

renovated closet, two weeks ago

After (Middle):

North wall: now with organized bins, at least!

 After I've painted in this room, the north wall will be getting shelves.  These plastic bins are full of fabric; they'll be replaced with smaller bins that will fit into the shelves - clear bins, so that I can see what I'm after at a glance, instead of having to dig. Gonna have to do something about that litterbox in the corner, too.  Bleh.

Sewing Table #1 For Two Machines & Piano Accompaniment

 These wire racks holding the tabletop up will eventually be replaced with cubby-shelves with baskets, or file cabinets, or something like that - sturdier, more attractive, better storage.

wow...no.  just no.

 I DO still want curtains over the closet door...but not these.  These I had sitting around in the fabric bins, and I threw them up there just to see what the color would look like...and I hate it.  I'm thinking plain white linen.  Payday.

no! more! piles! of crap!

This is the south wall, where eventually I'll build a flip-up cutting table that will fold down flat against the wall when not in use.  For the time being, I'm enjoying the sight of the bare wall without shelves and boxes of crap in front of it.  This room has no ceiling fan (yet), so I spray-painted this plastic fan with gray primer, and will put a metallic coat over it to make it look like steel and wire, as soon as I get some metallic spray paint.

muslin café curtain over window - light in, neighbors out

I also took about 10 minutes yesterday to sew up a wee scrap of muslin into a little café curtain for the craft room window.  This is one of the darkest rooms in the house;  this curtain is sheer and light enough to let in all the light I need during the day, and thick enough to keep out prying eyes at night.


Getting there!

More Ideas For Projects I'm Never Going To Get Around To

So, that back patio of mine...

ooh, ahh.

Wouldn't be awesome if it looked like that, but with grass in between the stones?  Actually, it does.  And it's fantastic when I remember to take the weedeater to it every week, but who has time for yardwork? 

::crickets::

But looking pretty cool doesn't solve the real problem with it, which is that the stones are (a) really, really, really rough underfoot (because I didn't smooth out the concrete enough when I made them, and I should've used cement anyway, NOT concrete, because it's full of tiny rocks! Ow!)   Also, (c), I'm actually kinda bored with it.  And (d) if I'm going to have to dig some of it up to put up posts for a pergola-type-thing overhead...why not just scrap the whole thing and do something new? 

With me? Awesome.

So I keep seeing stuff like this...

O_O

And this...

if my toes could drool...

I mean, really, can't you just feel that soft, smooth wood under your bare feet?  I really wish I could find the photo I'm thinking of - I saw one not too long ago that's *gorgeous* and *perfect*, but did I bookmark/pin/save it?  Hell no.

It was little more than a "Hey, that's neat", until I remembered that in my hoard stash in the garage, I've got two buckets of black marble chips, another bucket of stones in assorted sizes/colors that have been in and out of gardens and fishtanks for years, a huge pile of lumber that's technically usable but which I know I won't ever really build anything with, including a couple of small heavy timbers and some end-grain pieces, a couple of spare bags of sand (for re-doing the base underneath the patio)...and I think I have some weed-blocking cloth in there somewhere, but I'm not sure. I even have a couple of gallons of deck sealant/stain sitting around in my paint hoard supplies.  Even if I have to buy more weed-blocking cloth, that's an entire project for like $20, done almost entirely with stuff I already have.

see also: breezy net sheers, moroccan lantern, hanging plants, live grass, time to do all this

Yeah?

Like I have time to do that.  But it's a neat idea.


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Woohoo!

Hey, know what's awesome?  Writing posts and then going to post them and finding that they're mysteriously not there.   Especially when the pictures seem to have disappeared, too. 

ARGH. 

Missing post, short version:  THE FREAKING CRAFT ROOM IS CLEANED UP AND ORGANIZED AND DONE OMG. 

Um...new pics later this week.  Argh argh argh.

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HAH.

Raise your hand if you re-use plastic grocery bags.  I use them for, among other things, trash bags in my car...because I'm one of those people who will toss a can or a burger wrapper over my shoulder into the backseat if I'm driving, if you let me.  I know, because I've seen me do it.

Seemingly unrelated, I spent about four hours today working on the craft room (no, there are no "after" pictures yet, sorry), and I found an embroidery hoop.   I don't embroider, so...?  But later, taking a break in front of Pinterest, I saw this laundry doodad:

cute, huh?

 AHA!!!


A hoop:

Seriously, I didn't even know I had this.

A bag:

A car trash that STAYS OPEN and is easy to use while driving!    Thanks, Pinterest!

Doesn't my car look clean in this shot?  It's really, really not. 

If I happen to find one or two of the fourteen thousand little aluminum carabiner clips that I know are in this house somewhere,  in the near future, I'll use one of those to hook the hoop to the "Oh Shit Handle" in the car instead of just tying the bag on. 

And yes, since you asked:  there are actual updates on the way for this coming week.  See ya soon. :)


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Motivation FAIL

Actually, it's more of a daunting thing.  I am daunted by the craft room.  There's just SO much to do, and every single step is huge and time-consuming and tedious (since it involves slowly beating back the last advance of what very nearly became the beginning of a serious hoarding situation). Not to mention the fact that the rest of my life has gotten so blindingly busy lately that when I get a minute to myself I hardly know what to do with myself aside from just taking a nap, I'm so stressed out.  UGH. 

I'm planning some more work in there this coming weekend, if I get a minute and am feeling up to it; but for the time being, here are some photos I've collected via Pinterest to keep me inspired as I trudge along through the details of getting the hard stuff in the room taken care of so I can move on to the fun stuff:
  

from

The room's already gray and off-white (and green, but, we'll deal with the floor another day).




Soft linen, aged wood...

from

Gray/cream, warm and touchable wood.

I love the mirror, too.

from

Nom nom nom.

from

These blue shutters kill me.

Inspiration Strikes When and Where It Will

For a bit of fun on this gorgeous Friday afternoon, I thought I'd share with you where I got the inspiration for the layout on my patio. 

In 2006 I used the Quikrete Walkmaker to make a concrete patio on the back of the house.  This is what it looked like the day it was finished:

Hey, look, I actually had grass before I had dogs...

(It didn't actually dip in the center like that -  I had to splice two photos together to get this shot).  The border around the edge would become a "hedge" of herbs surrounding the patio with green and lovely scents and lots of bees. 

Last year, tired of cracking mortar, weeds, and upset stones from the ground settling, I chipped out the entire thing, fixed the grade of the sub-surface, and laid the stones in a more organic pattern; intending to allow the grass to fill in between the stones, which would (a) create a softer, prettier surface to walk on, and (b) allow Nature to take its course on the patio instead of trying to fight it every step of the way.  This is what it looked like the day I finished it:

You can see here the GIANT Rosemary bush on the upper right, which was *tiny* in the first picture;  the little tree behind it is my Mexican Orchid Tree (Bauhinia mexicana),  which is the plant in the pot on the lower left in the first picture - barely a stick then!

it does have grass between the stones now, by the way

Another shot of the stones, which are arranged in concentric circles beginning at the four corners of the patio that meet at the edges like ripples in a pond. You can see the herb border fully grown in here - this was taken about a month before that Raging Death Fungus of Doom ripped through my entire garden and killed everything last year.  Sadface. :(

But here's the fun part:  the inspiration for the stone layout:

I have no idea who these players are, but they're totally cheating.

Heeheehee.  This is a screenshot from the game Gauntlet: Dark Legacy for Playstation (yes, Playstation *one*).  Specifically, this is the Lich's crypt, the Lich being the Big Bad Guy at the end of the first segment of the game.  I love this old game, and I still play it all the time;  and I've always loved the stones in the grass on the floor of this level.  Ever since I first saw it I've wanted to make a little grassy stony patio like it.   Obviously mine's a bit different, but this is where I got the idea.

LOL.   :)



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What's Better Than Shelves? More Shelves!

Having filled (and organized!) the craft room closet, my work in the craft room is about halfway done.  Which is HUGE.

And because I like lists, here's what's gone on in there this week:

• closet emptied and cleaned, top shelf removed, holes patched
• doors removed, painted
• closet painted
• plywood cut into two additional shelves and a desktop/shelf, and painted to match walls
• shelves/desktop hung in the closet
• stuff from 2 standing shelves in the room organized into the closet
• doors replaced
• doors removed again, curtain rod in doorway instead

 
 And here's what's left:

1. hang curtains on that rod
2. put the doors on the closet in the guest room, and move the guest room closet doors to storage in the garage
3. adjust the paint job in the rest of the room (long story, pics as soon as I'm done)
4. cut the rest of the plywood into 4 more floating shelves, procure extra shelf brackets for the rails I already have, paint shelves, and hang on open wall in room
5. procure smaller, clear bins and organize fabric into it - re-use the old (big, opaque) plastic bins in the garage
6. hang the art I have for the room;  print out some extra stuff to fill in with blockposters.com
7. procure & hang a ceiling fan (hot!!!)
8. repair cord on desk lamp that's supposed to be on my sewing table and put it back where it goes (blind!!!)
9.   
10.   

You know, I could go on for pages and pages.  At *this* moment, I'm really only concerned with #1-6. After all that's done, I have to re-organize some stuff in the garage, because I'm going on my annual Big Camping Trip the second week of June, and at the moment I can't even SEE my camping gear.  Um...oops.

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Pin this!

stuff

The craft room closet is REALLY coming along.  Last night I got most the contents of those two black shelves into the closet, and most of the *stuff* piled up in the room organized into it, too.  Success!  I even restrained myself when I saw exactly the plastic totes at Target that I want to put my fabric in, because, you know, one must pay one's electricity bill before shopping.  Or so I hear.

The next step is to hang a curtain over the doorway ( I decided against putting the doors back up - curtains will be easier to move out of the way, and softer, and I just happen to have some that I'd forgotten about); and do something about all those mismatched boxes.



In the meantime...



I rarely hawk for websites, but you guys have GOT to see this (if you haven't already, which you probably have;  I'm often in the very last car on the Internet Train).

I even have a pin board just for BLUE STUFF  :D

Pinterest  kicks butt.  It's kind of a visual bookmark site:  create an account, create as many "boards" (albums) where you can "pin" (bookmark) pictures that you find online and browse through them all on one page instead of digging through text bookmarks and wondering which one is which.  Pinterest also saves & links the sources for the things that you pin.

You can comment, "like", tag people/places/things in pins, re-pin others' pins, follow boards other people maintain, and organize your boards and the photos in them. There's even an iPhone app coming soon so you can pin from your phone.  You DO have to request an invitation from the website itself and create an account, but it's free, and it's quick. 


Mine is here. I'm slowly but surely migrating all of my internet bookmarks over to my pin boards.  I'm not remotely done, but the process is fun, and fills many boring hours during the week. :)
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AHA!!!! (Craft Room Closet B&A!)

It took six hours, and it like to killed me by the time I was done last night, but I have FINALLY fixed up the craft room closet!  What was wrong with it, you ask?  This...

Before

O_O

1.  I mean REALLY. 
2.  I am so. over. the green.

catbomb!

See the "panels" on the wall back there?  Once upon a time, this closet was a little computer desk nook, and those cleats were part of the support system for the desk top.  When I turned it back into a closet, I left the cleats on the wall thinking maybe, just maybe I'd end up putting another desktop in there...

After

the same blue from the bedroom and laundry room

Et voila!  The desktop returns, and can be used for storage or as a small work surface on occasion (when the closet was a computer nook, I really liked being able to do small crafty things in there, too). 

The top shelf is the same one from the "before" picture;  the middle two are adjustable, thanks to the rails and brackets.  The narrow space between the top shelf and the first of the adjustable shelves is intentional:  I have so much flat art stuff - canvases, giant sketchbooks, rolls of paper, trays of supplies - that I always ended up piling it on my sewing table (gah!!) or putting it on a shelf and then stacking stuff on top of my artwork because of all the wasted space on the shelf (gah!!!!)  Now I have a dedicated art-stuff-shelf which is exactly the right shape and size.  I am SO excited about this.

Now all I have to do is take all the stuff from here: 

And put it here:

 

 

HAHA

Ah, if only it were that easy. 



To be honest, though, I'm not crazy about the blue doors:

The green's gone, which is awesome.  But the blue is ...wrong...for where I'm planning to go with the room (which is a completely different place than I was thinking of last year, so if you remember that post, please shake your brain's Etch-A-Sketch and erase it). 

Anyhoo, I think I'd rather leave the blue closet as a surprise, and paint the doors white again, like they were before the green thing happened.   They could probably use, like, knobs, too.  Or...bifold doors? Or...*gasp*....curtains??  Hm...



Anyway.

FREAKING TADA!!!   I did something, yay. 


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