A New, Two-Day Bedroom

When last we met my sewing/craft room, it looked like this:

And that was pretty cool.  But...  

Yesterday I began a "Trading Spaces" -style two-day whirlwind makeover.



I painted the ceiling, a wide band around the lower baseboards, window, and doorways, patched holes and primed over them, and then went to work in the garage mixing paint.

Sherwin Williams' "Distance"

While I had had every intention of actually purchasing paint for this project, my recent layoff meant that I couldn't - and it turns out I didn't need to:  I had a blue that was close enough to the color I wanted that it took very little adjustment to make it work.










AND THEN...

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Lesson 1:  this color is a bitch to photograph.  sigh.  

These curtains, and the pendant lamp over the nigtstand, are the only things that stayed - both
were part of the ex-sewing room.

Had to lay down on my bed to take this shot.  Almost didn't get up. 

I'll note here that (a) this pic (above) is the truest representation of this color in photos so far.  It's really hard to photograph!  And also (b) you can see here why I painted a thick band of white around all of the molding.  Such a tiny room in such a dark color needs all the highlighting it can get, in order to bounce around a bit of extra light, shrink the dark expanses a bit, and give structure to a plain, boxy room.  I like how the overall effect is kinda bungalow-y.  :)

A silver-plated serving tray given to me by a friend last year, for my jewelry.  Yay! 

The only thing left to do in the room is to hang my jewelry cabinet, but at the moment it's kind of buried in the old bedroom under a mountain of craft crap (crapft).  Guess what I'm doing tomorrow?  :D

Two Rooms (Both Alike In Dignity)

As much as I change my home - paint colors, furniture arrangement, the furniture itself, art and display - certain things never change.  My bedroom has been my bedroom for a decade.  My craft room has been my craft room for nearly as long.  I've mentioned that I was planning to swap the two spaces...it's begun.

I began with the closets: 

1.   First, I emptied my bedroom closet:

Ikea's STOLMEN post as closet rod:  great for a long wall;

although the rod is just a tad too wide for hangers to slide

comfortably. 

2.  Next, I started filling it, in order to clear out the closet in the sewing room.  I managed to get the ENTIRE contents of my sewing room closet into the bedroom closet, as well as the ENTIRE fabric wall, and, well, pretty much everything but my current sewing-in-progress and furniture.  Holy cow, this is a big closet!

Once the STOLMEN "rod" was down, I moved in the shelves

that once held fabric in my soon-to-be-ex-sewing-room.
(This closet is simply packed full;  actual organization
to occur at a later date). 

3.   That left me with an empty sewing room closet full of shelves that needed to be removed:

4.  Which was then fitted with a regular closet rod and wall brackets, and all of my clothing (which, despite this closet being the same length as my big now-ex-bedroom-closet, fits my clothes better somehow. It's a TARDIS.

*  I would like to thank, personally, both the inventor of the wheel, and my friend Debi for the use of her convertible dolly/cart, without which this job would have taken daaaays, and much back-breaking and expletive-flinging. 

And yes, that green box IS full of actual rocks. 

So now, both rooms are a shambles.  I can't sew until this job is done, but at least I have a space in which to sleep.  I admit, this project is so huge that it's been prohibitively daunting, but I feel good about it now that I've started.  Moving closets was a HUGE first step, and a necessary one.  You guys have seen my craft room - it was organized, but it was full.  Now there's room to move, and to slide things around in order to work on the room itself.

And I am somewhat pleased to report that during this process, I only walked into the wrong closet four times.

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So This Happened.

I had every intention springing a freshly-painted guest bathroom on you today, but alas, instead of painting last night (after weather and traffic and the thing I'm about to share with you kept me from going to do a craft night thing with some buddies last night, argh), I came home to find this:



...Wait, wait, lemme back up.  Remember this pic from the other day?

I'm dyeing the Surya rug that I won a couple of years ago.  Same process as I used for the black wing chair, which came out really well.  That job was fast, easy, and the color has never once rubbed off.

This time, however, instead of Rit dye, I'm using a brand called Jacquard (because a friend gave it to me, so I've been playing with all the colors).  It's meant for protein fibers like wool and silk, and is also supposed to do a great job on nylon and polyester - and this rug is wool and poly.

I'm not sure why the dye is coming out;  I suspect because I just WAY oversaturated it in an effort to make sure it soaked all the way through the fibers.  But anyhow, though I placed a bunch of random furniture on it yesterday while I was at work to keep the animals off of it, just in case, I came home to this:

Daisy was really confused as to what I thought was so funny.  And then she got a bit annoyed with me for taking so many pictures of her (these were the only two that weren't just a total blur).

One no wait, two, THREE dog baths later - because after I washed Daisy, I discovered that Shelly's face was blue, so I washed her, too; and then I washed Raven because even though he's black and I couldn't see any dye, I figured he must be covered, too - and he was - I threw a tarp over the rug and then filled it with furniture and plastic tubs to keep it in place, so that I won't find blue animals in my house again this evening.

I'm going to borrow that carpet cleaner from that friend again this evening, and use it to wash the excess dye out of the rug.

Hopefully this story will have a happy ending.  In the meantime, please laugh at my blue dog.  I bust out laughing every time I look at the pictures, hehe.


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NEXT!

Okay, so, the costumery-blitz leading up to last weekend is FINALLY OVER, and it's time to PUT YOUR FOOT ON IT AND STAND!!!

Oh, no, wait - that's 13th Warrior.  Which is like my favorite movie ever.  But I digress. 

It is seriously time to get crackin' on the housey stuff again.  BFF Sylvan is moving in in just 39 DAYS.   I have a loooooot to get done in that time.  

In the last couple of months I've been cleaning and clearing space almost nonstop, in between working on like a bajillion sewing commissions for the SCA and prepping (and cleaning up after) the Halloween party.  (I swear, the people at the Goodwill donation site must know me by name by now).  The next step is to start actually preparing rooms.  To wit: 

• paint the guest bath
• move all the stuff from my sewing room into my bedroom
• demo the sewing closet, and turn it back into a "regular" closet
• paint the sewing new bedroom and closet, and then bring all of my bedroom things into it'
• organize and arrange the master bedroom new giant craft room (hereafter known as The Room of Requirement)
• build my master closet into a new awesome craft supply storage room

And and and and and.  I mean, SO much to do.   I was going to start last night, except that at the SCA event over the weekend, I managed to pull a partial dislocation on BOTH of my shoulders, so I've kinda been sitting around with noodle arms for a few days.  

But last night, I did manage to do this: 

Yes, it's a terrible, terrible phone pic. Because it's not done.  

But you'll get to see the finished result, and a whole bunch more, very soon.  I promise. :) 

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