My craft room is coming along!! It's not nearly done, I still have to hang pictures and decorate a little more and actually MOVE my craft stuff done here and make a curtain for the shelf...whoa that's still a lot. BUT! I did TWO projects this weekend, I stayed up all night painting/sanding/hammering and almost killed myself doing these things! I decided to close in the shelf in our basement to make it more of a closet, it used to look like this:
See how it is all open? I wanted to cover it and so we bought some plywood and had it cut in half to fit the side of this. The other side of the plywood, I wanted to use to build a desk to put into the wall, right where that folding table with the sewing machine is. Here is my non-carpenter-I-dont-really-know-what-Im-doing drawing....
So we had two pieces of plywood that looked like this...
I used magnetic paint first, three light coats of this....
and then the chalkboard paint - two coats of this - so it would be a magnetic chalkboard in my craft room for me to draw up and dream ideas on. Also, Dave & Ashley can leave notes here too, if they want;)
So I painted it and used my power drill to attach it to the shelf, so it looks like this! Its very black and once it dries and sets I can put stuff and draw stuff on it, it'll look a little cuter - but I love that I have this space to decorate with chalk and shabby magnets. I dont really have a "shabby chic" spot in our home so this room is it..
I'm going to make a curtain to cover the front of the shelf-made-into-closet. Something pretty to hide all that crapOla. Anyways, then I got started on the desk. I went to my parents house and mom helped me, using her table saw, cut all my custom measured (lol) desk parts. I put two braces on either side on those built in cabinets that hold our water pump and something else, to help hold up the desk top. Then I primed and painted all the desk parts and mounted the desk top on the braces...
Not bad, right? I put the sewing machine on it because the desk top is bowed a little bit. Mom says to put something heavy on it and it'll even out in a few days, if it doesnt its not a big deal. This is my first custom built desk, I'm not expecting it to be perfect! After that I got started on making the "legs" with cubbies. This part was hard! I had to glue (wood glue) the little cubby shelves on, and let them dry - see the coke cans hold them in place until they stick?? Thats the official way to do this, by the way! LOL
Then after they dried I nailed them in, and then nailed the other side of the shelf on, and PRESTO! I have a desk, after fitting them under the desk top - they fit perfect and help hold the top up a little better.
Heres a straight shot of the whole desk. I'm very proud of myself for making this. It was hard and took a lot of blood, sweat and tears (seriously) but I did it and I'm very happy with it!
Here it is with my craft boxes tucked in. I need to fill them and make custom labels, and decorate more down here. That shelf over on the right will be mounted on the wall to hold sewing stuff, and I have wall words and lots of pictures to put up around the room. It's coming right along, I feel accomplished!! Let me know what you think!
I think I am going with English Country Cottage theme in this room - it feels very "Pride and Prejudice" and I have a lot of shabby chic type of decor from my old apartment. It feels so "old" time proper english when I sit and sew:) Just like Elizabeth Bennett!
Oh if you havent seen what this room USED to look like, you can see that
here - it's come a long way!!
