Ikea Hack: A Sewing Desk

This was what my sewing corner looked like last week:

The sewing machines are on that same corner desk I've had for ages and never get around to finishing refinishing.  (Also it's missing a leg ever since we moved).  Next to it on the left there are two Ikea Helmer file cabinets which hold sewing and craft supplies.  You saw the new craft room last week; this is the story of the sewing desk.  So far it works really well and I LOVE using it. 

First: a can of Rustoleum's gray automotive primer: 

I used the same auto primer on an Ikea Raskog two years ago, and it came out really well.  The primer is made specifically for metal and metal paint, and that cart came out pretty much indestructible.  I wanted to use the auto primer again for this project because of all the abuse these Helmers take while I'm sewing.  

I also sprayed the handles gold (also R's American Accents): 

Once the primer was cured, I painted both Helmer units in Rustoleum's American Accents matte finish spray paint in Coastal Sage (sort of a blueish chalkboard-green color):

When both Helmers were painted and put back together, I purchased a 2x4' birch project panel at the hardware store and used it to create a desktop to go on top of them.  I raised the height of the desktop by placing a pair of 1" risers cut from an old shelving board on top of the Helmers.  I also used sections of clear Ikea Komplement drawer liner in between the wood pieces to keep them from sliding around.  

 So there's a new desk, for the cost of two cans of spray paint and a $26 piece of wood.  I turned two small pieces of furniture into one functional one, and moved a big, bulky, broken table out of the way.  Now I have a well-organized space that's comfortable and intuitive to use.  

Bonus:  my favorite part about my new sewing desk is the power strip on the right side - see it there, with the cords sticking out?  I have all the sewing machines, the light, the iron, and the pencil sharpener run through that power strip, so that I can turn the ENTIRE workspace on with one button.  Fwoosh! Ready to work.  The power strip even has USB charging ports, so I can charge my phone or whatever while I work.  Sweet!   

Making Over the Craft Room

It was time to do a complete overhaul of the entire craft room.  Here's what it looked like before:

Cluttered, crammed full of small furniture, and with a terrible, dark paint job.  We basically moved in, shoved a bunch of crap into this room, and never touched it again.  Bad. 

This little bookshelf wasn't being put to use very well - it was crammed up against the doorway and stuffed full of random crap that belonged in the closet.  

The closet doors were missing, and nothing in the closet (or out of it, truthfully) was very well organized.

First I set about organizing the room.  There were a couple of boxes which should have been stored in the garage that I moved out there;  everything else in the closet got reorganized and re-stacked, so that it would STAY in the closet.  Surfaces were cleared, things were put into plastic bins and stored on an Ikea Hyllis shelving unit in the closet.

Next:

1. I painted the room, in a color I mixed myself by adding some yellow-gold to the SW Silvermist I had on hand leftover from my bedroom. The resulting shade matches up to SW Comfort Gray, if you're interested.  
2. I hung curtains - I moved the white Ikea Matilda semi-sheers from my bedroom into this room, once replacements for the bedroom arrived in the mail (more on that later).  
3. I found the closet doors in the garage, ordered some replacement hardware for them, and re-hung them in the room.  The doors also got a fresh coat of white paint.  
4. I hung the ironing board on the wall behind the entry door, to keep it out of the way
5. I hung a pendant lamp over the sewing table, using an Ikea Hemma light kit and a glass sconce I've had for years.  It and the sewing machines are plugged into a power strip mounted on the side of the desk so that I can turn the entire sewing table on with one button.  
6. I moved a short bookcase from the door of the room over to the corner behind the sewing desk, and moved a small dresser to the door of the room, to hold the printer and printer supplies
7. I hung new art (printed from online) over the bookcase and art table in the rear of the room

Here's the whole room, more or less, in its finished state.  It's lighter and brighter, the windows softer, the furniture balanced and the floorplan open.  I rearranged the furniture and moved that little bookshelf next to the window to balance out the art table on the right side.  I LOVE my new sewing desk, and having doors back on the closet makes a huge difference in how clean and organized the room feels. 

The desk is made from a pair of Ikea Helmer file cabinets, spray painted in "Coastal Sage" (Rustoleum American Accents), with a 2x4' birch project panel across the top - up on 1" shelf risers to make the desk height the correct height.  I've got both sewing machines, the overhead light, and the pencil sharpener and iron plugged into the power strip on the right side of the desk, so I can turn EVERYTHING on at once with the touch of a button.  

Finally, the closet doors.  There's nothing remarkable about them, except that they're finally hung (it took some doing, and I had to buy all new mounting hardware), and they CLOSE and hide all the "organized clutter" inside.  

Tada!   

The Craft Room, and Another Big Change

I started this post two months ago, when I began working on the craft room.  I got a little distracted along the way, but we'll deal with why in a minute.   As you can see below, this room is red as fuck.  It's a gorgeous color, but very dark, and there's a whole lot of it in this big master bedroom-turned-craft room.

I started by finishing out all the baseboards, as in the rest of the house, and by cleaning, priming, and re-painting all the doors and trim.  The walls themselves are taking 2 coats of primer to cover up the red enough that it can be painted over. 

One wall of the room is textured with sand mixed into the red paint, just like the walls in the master bathroom walls ; except that on this wall, a sort of strié technique has been used to shape the sand texture into vertical  ridges. Just like in the bathroom, I wondered why??

While priming around one of the windows on this wall, I figured it out:  this wall is covered in wallpaper!  At some point, it was painted over (and over, and over - there are at least three different colors on top of it), and textured with the sand and dragging technique.

Hunter Green and burgundy, with gold.  Oh yeah! I thought. This house was built in 1984! Of course it's got plaid wallpaper. LOL.

I found wallpaper under the vanity in the master bath, too (blue with gold fleurs-de-lis)  - I bet it's all over the bathroom, under that sand texture. I can't believe I didn't put two and two together before.












So, I continue to chug along on this room.  It's about half primed now, and all of the trim and doors are finished;  It just needs a wall primed, and then paint on the whole thing. And while I've been working on repainting, I've also been  PACKING.

The Frost Is Off the Ground 

We're moving again.  My landlady-friend is selling the house.  Sylvan and I were supposed to spend 2017 preparing for a move to Oregon, but we both had a horrible year full of injuries and medical issues, and didn't get our shit together.  So we're looking for another rental house here in Austin. that isn't scary and that will accept 2 dogs and 5 cats.  And, of course, we're packing, and getting rid of as much as we can to facilitate a move into a smaller space, and eventually, a long move across the country.


I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of terrified.   But I'm pretty big on the idea of focusing on the tasks and items you can control, instead of worrying about the ones you can't.  We'll find a place; and in the meantime, I'm looking forward to not being anyone's live-in-handywoman anymore.  Projects are fun, right up until they're jobs.  Also, if I never have to repair any plumbing again, it'll be too soon.

So I'll keep you all updated on the usual house projects, the house search, and eventually, the new place!

BONUS CAT:  not supposed to be napping in houseplants

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"New" Furniture For the Craft Room

Playing the sliding-tiles game with furniture in my house again:  

Problem: 

• a giant armoire full of towels and sheets in my bedroom, which was in my way, and was also inaccessible to my roommate when I was asleep in there
• a mostly-empty hall closet
• some slapdash shelves on a corner wall in my craft room, full of boxes of fabric and supplies, and  surrounded by piles of same on the floor

Solution: 

1. I removed the shelves in the craft room and put them up in the hall closet, and moved all the linens into the hall closet where they're accessible to everyone
2. I moved the armoire to that corner of the craft room, and re-organized the boxes and supplies into it

(I don't have pics of the hall closet - there's so little light in that hallway that I can't get a decent one.  It's basically just shelves in a closet, though). 

And then...

A friend and I swapped dressers over the weekend - my small one for her large one (she wanted to use two smaller dressers in her daughter's room instead of one huge one).  And so this came home with me on Saturday: 

Ikea HEMNES

Most of my fabric stash had been stored in sixteen of those white plastic Ikea (SNALIS, discontinued) boxes (like the two on top of this dresser in the pic), stacked in/on top of that long, low, black shelving unit under the window in the pic (it'll be re-homed soon).  The contents of all but those two boxes fit neatly into the four main drawers in this dresser, and I got all of my small scraps into the smaller drawers at the top.  

So, what do I do with fourteen 5-gal plastic boxes?  I'm not sure yet.  They'll probably end up holding craft supplies in the closet in this room, or full of small tools and things in the garage.  



Cross-posted from my SCA sewing blog, clothofstars.blogspot.com

OHAI I forgot.

You know, I was looking over my blog(s) the other day, and realized that I never actually posted finished pics of the new craft room (aka "Room of Requirement")!

Okay, so, you've seen the old version:

Which is now my bedroom:  

And my old bedroom, which in this picture is filled with stuff from the old sewing room, during the room swap.  I haven't been a "hanging out in my room" person since I was a teenager.  Who needs all this room to just sleep?

At first, Sylvan and I thought we'd put our work tables in the center of the room, like this: 

Before she'd even moved in, I realized how very, very much that was NOT going to work.  My sewing machine vibrated both tables so much that she'd never have been able to work like that; and also, since all my sewing stuff was jammed up against the wall behind me, but my cutting table was on the opposite side of the room, I kept having to get up and walk around while I was working.  

So we drew up a new floor plan that worked better for both of us, with each of us with a work table against a wall, storage around, and my cutting table in the center, which is easier for me to get to without having to stand up if I don't need to, and also so that we can BOTH use the cutting table as a large, open work surface if needed: 

(made with Icovia Floor Planner) 

And here is the finished Room of Requirement, and folks, this is about as tidy as it gets.

CAUTION:  WOMEN AT WORK!

It works great.  We both love it, and we're both enjoying spending time in there crafting together.  When she moved in, we put her TV in the living room, and put my [smaller] one in the craft room, so we frequently have a movie on in the background while we work (usually a Disney animated flick; though my go-to when I'm working alone is Pride and Prejudice, in case you're wondering.  When it's just me and just music, I listen to a lot of Chinese flute, for some reason. It's calming).  

Meanwhile, I haven't been doing much around the house at all for the past several months, because I've been going nonstop on the SCA stuff (which is all here at my SCA blog, if you're interested).  And then there was Raven, and some sitting around moping for a while, while I was processing.

Also, looking over this blog recently, I realize that I am utter PANTS and things like: 

• decent photographs of anything
• posting finished pictures and follow-up on previous posts

That's going to change, guys.  I hate looking at this blog and being disgusted with myself.  I had this same issue with my SCA blog back in September, made some serious revisions to my organization and self-management, and it's been working out great - I'm really proud of my SCA work, and my SCA blog.  This one?  Not so much.  It's going to get better.  

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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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Brainstorming the New Bedroom

I just finished redecorating my sewing room in January. 10 months ago, LOL.

This is what it looks like now (if you remove all the clutter and piles of fabric and five zillion projects going at once):

And this is where I think I'm gonna go with it.  I've loved the pale blues in my master suite, but I've recently fallen in love with a Sherwin Williams color called "Distance," and I can't help but think I'm going to end up sleeping here:

(made with Olioboard

Hm.  

Just thinking. 

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Annual Sewing Room Refit

Do I really do this every December/January?  I do, don't I?  Weird.

Anyway, the gray and white that I did last year was boring the heck out of me.  This is a creative space.  Grayscale?  Really?  I have no idea.

Before (last year)

Beige linen curtain (love), fabric boxes on wall shelves,
white above, grey below with grey trim. 

Closet shelves.  Grey and white and grey and white. 

What has turned out to be an awesome fabric storage idea, 

What's happening now... 

Fabric bins moved into the newly-pink closet

Doors back on.  The curtain was always a pain in the rear;
I ended up taking it down, and then the closet was
just this great big gaping hole.  

Last week and over the weekend I did a LOT of painting, refinishing, spray-painting, and re-arranging.  I'm not quite done yet; but by way of a preview, the whole room is going in somewhat this direction:

made using Olioboard

Update soon!


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Recipe for Organization

Organized Sewing Patterns (serves 1)

1 file cabinet with broken wheels and lock, free from friend

1 package legal-size hanging file folders

1 package letter-size hanging file folders

1 box of sewing patterns, already organized into manila folders

1 box homemade costume patterns, on various bits of paper and fabric

leftover adhesive-backed door insulation strip

screwdriver

1.   Remove wheels and lock from cabinet.  Use insulation stripping to pad the bottom of the file cabinet edges so it won't scratch the floor. 

2.  Carefully fold and sort costume patterns into folders in top drawer. 

3.  Adjust lower drawer file rack to fit letter-sized folders sideways, and insert regular patterns already in manila folders. 

4.  Recycle empty cardboard boxes, and enjoy your new organized pattern cabinet AND the extra space in the craft room closet! 

And because someone is always curious about this, here's what I do with my store-bought patterns: 

Slice open the pattern jacket, and glue the front to the outside of a folder, and the back to the inside. Label the folder tab, unfold the pattern pieces to fit inside the folder. Done.  Much easier to store and locate them, I feel.  

It's Finished!!!

This is what a finished craft room looks like! 

YAY!

Back to its old, cluttered, workroom-looking self - but with organized shelves, an updated and brighter paint job, art, and a REAL FLOOR.

And a vacuum cleaner, for some reason.
Sorry about that.

I have to give props to Kress, who spent Friday afternoon while I was at work, re-installing all the baseboards and door trim as a surprise for me!  Wow!


And this picture was taken with A REAL CAMERA!  I haven't gotten a new one yet; I borrowed a friend's Saturday for a short trip out of town.

As always, I still have a bit of work to do.  The naked floor lamp by the window is my task lighting, which I can't sew without.  I'd like to replace it with something more attractive, and that I can position over the table where I need it.  Then there's the ceiling, which I still haven't decided about.  I also need to re-cover the taupe office chair!  The cover I made for it not 3 months ago got a big hole ripped in the front of the fabric somehow during all this business with the floor!  AUGH!

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Almost there...

Just need to get those baseboards back into place, patch a gap (oops), and then put the room back together!

:D


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First DIY of the New Year: Going With the Flo'

Hey, check it out:

This was Sunday morning, after about two hours' work, all by myself.  Once Kress got home from work and we worked on it together, we zinged out the rest of the floor in two hours total.

The flooring is done!  But I still have to clean up the baseboards (remove nails, caulk, etc.) and put them back up, so, "after" pics when I'm really done.  :)

In case anyone's wondering, this is Ikea's TUNDRA laminate flooring (this color's not on the website).  I thought it was that easy snap-together "click lock" stuff, but it's not - plain ol' tongue and groove. Whatevs.  The foam underlayment is generic stuff from the hardware store - same price as Ikea's, and Ikea was out of it the day I bought the laminate!

Also, Kress and I signed the concrete underneath the floor.  Little gift for the next owners of the house. :o)

To be continued...


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Now For the Little Things...

Couple of extra touches in the craft room (some; not all):

Replaced the plain white muslin café curtain with a soft linen one; plant, more artwork.


I made this curtain, and the one below, Monday evening, which was the first time I'd used the new sewing table + file cabinet setup.  It's AWESOME.  Idk how I was dealing with that awful, rattle-y, shelf/box situation before.

Yup. I still hate the clock.  

Linen curtains over the closet door, to hide the mess when there's a mess.







<-- cat eating breakfast in the mirror. hee.













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Before & After: Craft Room Whoopass

I opened up a HUGE can of whoopass on my craft room over the long holiday weekend!  I'm tired, and sore, and at this particular moment I pretty much never want to paint anything ever again - but the room is 99% finished, and I'm SO excited about that!  Check it out:

Before:

 Loooong sewing table. Stained plywood top (ok, but the finish was wearing off), on black wire shelves for legs (wobbly, ugly, cramped legroom).

Gray walls.  Soft and relaxing, but boring.

Green painted concrete floor. (Hey, the paint was free, and at the time it was better than bare concrete).

3 of 4 wood plank shelves, fabric s l o w l y  being moved from bins on the floor underneath to "neatly" "folded" stacks, pending storage box decision.

Closet packed to bursting, half-assed, mis-matched carboard and paper boxes, and big plastic bins.


The bottom shelf was supposed to be an extra work surface for me to roll my chair up to. Do YOU see any place to work??

<-- 8yo carpet




After:
After a loooong four-day weekend of taking shelves down and re-painting them, painting the walls, sorting and organizing until I thought I'd die from it, and making some furniture changes:

I painted the top 2/3 of the walls a fresh, crisp white.

The wooden shelves were painted a cool, charcoal gray - kinda reminds me of the color of those old, metal, Steelcase desks.

The closet, formerly a weird, too-light blue, got the same treatment:  white walls (top and bottom), and "Steelcase" gray on the shelves.

I like the gray "frame" around the closet opening.






<-- the carpet's been removed in here, as well. Finally.

The sewing table top also got painted gray;  the shelf  "legs" were replaced by Ikea's CURRY legs, in silver.

While the dimensions of the top haven't changed, the table itself is about 3" shorter than it was - which I was REALLY worried about doing, but it actually turned out to be exactly what this table needed. No more shoulder strain!

A LOT of art went into this room, much of it my own.  These four are actually the very first "real paintings" I ever did.

The black bulletin board that used to sit behind the sewing machine on the right is now hanging vertically at the end of the desk. Less looming, and more space for art! :)

<-- Ikea's HELMER  file cabinet.  SO cute, and SO incredibly perfect for all of my sewing things.  No more shelves full of random boxes of loose stuff! :D

ALL of the shelves and fabric boxes are now in place! The boxes still need labels.

There's a gray "frame" around the window, too - since the walls were already gray, I just taped off everything I wanted to refrain from painting. The inside of the window casing is still gray, too, and I really like the effect.

Look, a ceiling fan!!!  Belive it or not, this is nearly my favorite part of the room.  This room is ridiculously hot in the summers.  Now I don't have to wheel in a big ugly box fan to keep me cool in here.

Note the gray border around the top of the walls.  There's a nifty ceiling thing that hasn't happened in this room quite yet, so I left space. :)







That's a lot of change, for a LOT of work - but really, not so much.  Really, all that happened in this room was:

• painting
• changing the table legs
• installing a ceiling fan
• bringing in that little Ikea file cabinet

But it took four days to do.  Four days of nearly non-stop work - Saturday and Monday were like 14-hour days.  I'm actually looking forward to going back to work this week, so I can sit still, hehe. 

There are a couple more things in this room to show you, which will happen in their own post - like curtains, plants, and other "soft" things, to break up all this gray-and-white, which, in these pictures, seems a bit stark. The fabric boxes still need labels, and I have a nifty idea about that to experiment with.  Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be finishing up the ceiling, too.  

The next big thing, though, will be putting real flooring down in this room, and its neighbor.  If things go the way I'd like them to, that'll happen this next weekend.  Woohoo! 

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