Sewing Room (before reno)

above: before sewing room reno

(left: purchased used cabinets right: emptied sewing room space)

I haven't been sewing much lately because for the past month I have been busy working on my new sewing room. I have enlisted the help of my dear hubby to complete this huge project. (Everything is a huge undertaking when caring for a 2 year old and 5 month old) I have longed for a sewing room for a few years now but never did I think I would actually get a personalized space just for me to sew and craft in. I knew what I wanted. Storage, storage and more storage.

I really like the storage solutions from ikea. But every time I found something I really liked, it proved to be too much money for me to do (once you add it all up ikea stuff costs a fortunate).

Cabinets:

After deciding to become a stay-at-home, my hubby and I have been buying used, so for over a year now I have been searching the classifieds for used kitchen cabinets. I don't know exactly what inspired me to look for used kitchen cupboards for my craft room but I'm sure glad I did. I was able to get all the cabinets that were in the picture above for $75 which is about the cost of one of those cheap Canadian tire cabinets on sale. Okay I know they are fugly beyond words. But they had amazing potential. I wanted to painted them. wow was that a challenge! I first attempted to paint one with a brush and it turned out horrid. Then I realized that we had a paint sprayer for my hubby's air compressor. So we tried it and it didn't go that great at first. (Not only did we have our 2 little ones, are neighbour was driving us nuts to being all nosy and crap! I wanted to tell him to leave us alone! I was embarrassed enough that we were yelling at each other (as we were so stressed with the little ones and trying to get the stupid thing to work on one of the hottest days of the year). It took us a while to figure out the correct pressure to put the sprayer at so that it wasn't coming out all clumpy but once we did it was easy sailing, and we all calmed down. I'm so glad that we spray painted it instead of using a brush, not only would it have taken hours to do it by hand it would have left those unsightly brush strokes that I despise!

Hardware:

I removed all the hardware before painting and patched the holes from the hardware. As I suspected, the patch was visible after painting was complete. So I wanted to wallpaper the centre of them in a modern black and white wallpaper. The new hardware I picked out is stainless steel which is a great contrast to the cabinets that we painted black.

Countertops:

I wanted to do some type of painting effect to the countertop but realized that it just would have cost too much for the supplies to do it, plus there wasn't enough countertop for what I needed. So I purchased white countertops from ikea. They were each $60. I used 1.5 of them for the countertops of the base cupboards, one is for all of my machines to sit. and the left over piece is just big enough to make into a cutting table. I haven't yet decided on whether or not to put legs (from ikea) on the cutting table or to purchase a used piece of furniture for more added storage. The cost is proving to be about the same.

Lighting:

It was very dark downstairs, especially at 11pm ! I found some pot lights "grundtal" that we purchased from ikea a few years ago, but never bugged dear hubby to put them up (sometimes you have to pick and chose when to bug them! LOL) So I purchased two more packages of them. My hubby was really skeptical about putting them up because they have all these wires running everywhere. But we solved that with more added Pegboard.

Pegboard:

A couple of months ago I purchased some pegboard which I found on kijiji. It was $8 per sheet which a steal when you compare it to $20 + a sheet at home depot and lowes. We bought 4 of them. My hubby put up a huge wall of pegboard. It looked so pretty as he even trimmed it all in and painted it white. So with the left over pegboard he installed it under the cabinets for more hooks and also to hide the lighting wires underneath. All that is left is to trim it all in!

Embroidery wall and wrapping paper center:

I have rolls of embroidery that take up a ton of room so dear hubby attached a left over piece of mdf to the wall (because we only have 24" centres for studs not the usual 12" or 16" centres.) so that I could attached something for my embroidery rolls to hang on. The problem with rolls of embroidery stabilizers is that they're depths are bigger than paper towels holders. So I found that the brackets used for plant hangers would be not only stylish but also would protrude far enough for my stabilizer rolls to hang off of. A few months back, I came across a wrapping paper centre (I think it was lowes that had a how -to) I loved the idea of having all of my wrapping paper in one place, as too many times I have had crushed/torn/mangled rolls of wrapping paper. The tutorial called for cafe rods which are used for curtains. Well, the cheapest cafe rods that I found were $10 a pop. So I found some curtain rods at ikea for $1.97 each. The diameter of the rod is prefect size for not only wrapping paper but also rolls of ribbon. They are steel so they will also hold the weight of rolls of ribbon too! I will get dear hubby to cut some of them as the dowels for the embroidery stabilizers.

The new craft room is coming along nicely. Never in my wildest dream did I think that this was attainable for a modest budget. This weekend we hope to complete the sewing room. I can't wait as I have so many projects I have to start.