Upcycling furniture for the craft room

For the past year, while I was having difficulty sitting comfortabley,  I have been working on getting more organized in my craft room. I accomplished this in 10 or 20 minute segments, and will have other posts coming up about these projects.

Today I want to show you the beauty of chalk paint on old, mismatched furniture items that are suitable for storage in the craft room.

We had a dark stained pine bedroom suite when we were first married. Forty-five years later, it was really showing all the nicks and scratches that were created over the years by various house movers. Although we were reimbursed for the damage and  replaced the furniture, I kept this one dresser from the set, to use in the craft room. It has lovely deep drawers that easily hold card boxes from Michaels.

My first thought was to chalk paint the dresser white, thereby matching the other painted furniture in my room. But then I read that dark brown or mahogany coloured stains can bleed thru chalk paint, so using an old rough looking  paintbrush, I painted on two coats of KILZ primer. Then I used two coats of Folk Art  Teal textured teal chalk paint that was purchased on clearance at Joannes for $5 a can.  It went on so nicely as it was really thick, and helped to hide the many fine surface scratches. Sadly,  it was a very bright teal and just did not look right in my aqua and teal room.  So I used two more coats of a duller Folk Art "Cascade"  teal chalk paint from Walmart, and then hand painted white in all the cracks and grooves with a fine art paint brush. Two coats of Behr white decorative finishing wax highlighted the white even more so, and I was happy with the end result.

I had a white French Provincial bedroom set that I used in the bunkhouse up at the old RV lot.. When we sold the lot, we had to leave most of the furnishings behind. I was able to keep the desk and desk hutch.

I moved that hutch downstairs to the craft room and painted the outside boards with the same teal chalk technique and then just added a little more paint across the detailing on the front. This hutch was again finished with the white Behr decorative finishing wax.

I had a devil of a time getting a good photo.

Here are some shots of the drawer interiors...
Washi tape and bling on  rolls

Envelopes

More envelopes, varying sizes

Envelopes again...do you think I have enough? Some preprinted card too as well as hessian, aida cloth, linen and others materials and fibers.

I am really happy with the end result. I put two layers of wax on the whole piece and then two more layers on the dresser top. Hopefully this will give a little extra protection to the top, as I usually drag the finished card baskets forward to browse through them!

I had three brushed silver drawer pulls leftover from a previous kitchen remodel. Luckily they fit over the old screw holes. I will have to pick up four more and this project will be done!

Tour Of My New Craft Room

A few of you have asked for a wee tour of my craft room at our new house. It has taken me awhile, but I finally have most things put away and can give you a few photos...

I was a bit slow unpacking in here, as I did not have enough room to put everything away! I finally found enough matching bookcases to hold all the items that used to live in my wall of pantry cupboards at the old house. First one, then another and finally a third! All matching the one I had previously. What luck! They are very 1980's or 90's,,, not anything I would would want anywhere else in my house...but the price was right, and they are very heavy and sturdy!

I am keeping to a very small budget for my craft room as we have reno plans for new counters, and floors upstairs...as well as having the interior of the  house painted. The painting quotes came in at 5 grand for the top two floors. Ceilings, walls, baseboards, window ledges and closets. That does not even include doors or bi-fold doors! Ugh! It has been 8 years since we painted a whole house...my oh my, it has sure gone up!  I talked them into a 10% discount as we have used them 4 times before and then I slashed the craft room budget and turned to Craigslist. lol

DH donated his old office desk and file cabinet.  When we bought that desk 20 or 25 years ago, we had a matching piece of oak cut to match the desk. Those two pieces form the creative working area of my room. Now I know oak is out of style, but c'est la vie... The eagle eyed among you may notice the larger brown woven baskets under the file cabinet desk. The largest holds my zippered binders of acrylic stamps. The smaller one is full of stamps that need filed away in their correct places....ughhh!
I have an ugly unfinished wooden support piece to hold up this side of the table...but have plans to swap this out for some Ikea legs...just as soon as I can get to Ikea...

Many of you know the previous owners of the house let us in a day early. It is unheard of here and it was so nice of them. I managed to get a painter to come in that day and paint my room. Thank goodness, as once the furniture went in it would have been impossible to paint it.

I hung the two tall white Embellishment towers over the one desk and slid some 6x6 Michael's storage cubes under them to help carry the weight.  Just behind me is a wall of 12x12 Michael's cubes that hold the rest of my embellishments. Each drawer has a theme...travel, girl, boy, garden, water, love, etc. My various square jars of flowers, ribbons and other doodads seem to fit nicely on top of these and the oak bookshelf beside them.

That bookshelf holds my 6x6 as well as 8x8 design papers, cardstock,  and same sized scrapbook albums. 81/2x 11 card stock is filed by colour, in magazine holders. The shoe boxes hold various card making kits that I have created myself. I need to remember to use these!!!

The white tower holds 12 iris carts. The top two are inks and the rest are wooden stamps and alpha stamps. I am going to change up the DP I lined the fronts of these with. I want something in the aqua/green brown shades of my new room.  The green plastic drawers are my Xmas card making papers, embellies, and general Xmas doodads. You can just see the entry door to my room to the right of those green plastic drawer units.

My room is sort of shaped like a Z...if you could imagine the Z to have a straight line down instead of a slanted one!  You walk in the door and see the area that forms the straight line of the Z. This is where I stashed the three bookcases. The hold my 12x12 Scrapbook albums and 12x12 design papers and card stock, as well as an assortment of pages sleeves, and other assorted scrapbook supplies. The shoe boxes hold envelopes, pre-printed card blanks (that I never seem to remember to use up), and a few odds and ends of themed supplies. Mainly wedding and outdoors/water themes as those seem to be what I scrapbook most! The various baskets and containers are not all filled yet. When we moved, I consolidated items into a large box so I could stack the baskets etc inside each other. That took up less room in the moving boxes. So while I am unpacked, I do still need to fine tune what exactly goes in each and then get it all labeled. For now,  it has been roughly sorted but needs some fine tuning,.

The book shelf closest to my desk area, holds all my card UFO's carefully stashed away in shoe boxes. The iris carts on the bottom two rows are my 12x12  self made kits. I placed all of these kits, as well as my snippet containers here...as close to my desk as possible. Hopefully that helps me to actually use them!! The rows of brown woven drawers on the middle shelf hold supplies I use all the time...like pop dots, tape refills, shading stumps, pencils, copics, etc.

The next shelf has the snippets and four more boxes of self made card kits. Top row needs tweaked. The wicker basket tray holds TH stains, stickles, H2O's, and other assorted things in bottles. I think I need to add an extra shelf board to hold those two brown woven baskets that looked perched in the corners. The hold embossing powders and assorted embossing supplies. Have to figure out a way to keep my heat gun somewhere there too.

The shorter wood shelf beside my desk with the TV on it, holds my Project Life supplies, more UFO;s and iris carts with 12x12 DP's from the themes I scrapbook the most. My thin metal dies also live here in a woven wicker basket and my embossing folders are in a brown woven basket just to the left of them. This keeps them easily to hand as my Big Shot sits on the left edge of my desk. The woven bacsket tray for the dies is driving me crazy...it does not match the other baskets of this size and style. I have a matching one somewhere in the garage...must remember to go on a hunt for it and swap this one out. It is driving my OCD tendencies crazy!!!

 I will show you the other side of the Z on another post. There is also a walk in closet just off this room...I share that with DH's books. It is a great place to hide all the sort of random things that are hard to organize.  Oh yeah...almost forgot to mention that I have plans to hang all my ribbon on one wall of the closet. It will be nice to finally have it all in one place!.