It's About Time...

So this fall we decided to finally take on a project that I had been putting off for years. I delayed it for so long perhaps because I knew once I started, it would be a lot of work and time before the job was completed.  So bottom line the longer I waited, the more work that it had become, (this kind of "stuff" has a way of multiplying). Late in the fall, I finally gathered our small army and we started to sift through years of clutter.

Yes, our playroom had far surpassed its intended use with our 15 year olds and our near 12 year old. 
So sad huh?  (Ugh, yes change is hard for me.)

The above looks innocent enough, but I assure you the amount of toys in these cupboards, and other little "storage piles" that appeared over the years were by far our most time consuming part of the remodel.  We emptied our little playroom and the study area attached to it little by little- and over 6 weeks time we cleared it out completely. I used this opportunity to purge and organize the rest of our house, thus the 6 week time-span. We sent much to our local Goodwill, we put on a large yard sale, made friends with the Craigslist crowd, and became Ebay pros.  

Our house is positioned on our land to where we are unable to have a basement, so this space over our garage has always had to be our catch-all for toys, books, our music space, the exercise area, and study. So we were a little undecided what we would actually do with this space once we had emptied it. 

We decided on a Hobby Room, which could easily make every person in our family happy with thoughts that hopefully this space could take us into the next decade. As little as I enjoy change, we are looking at least another 10 years before we see another remodel. 

Erik gave me a budget, $1,000.00 from start to finish. The rest of the money I would have to come up with; thus the yard sale, Craigslist, and Ebay postings.  That budget had to include everything but paint, (Erik let me use the household budget for paint being the last time we painted these walls was 2001). He's gracious like that. :) Our budget had to include every accessory, curtain, furniture piece, glue stick, pillow and the flooring. Yes... Everything.  Challenge accepted. 

My only rule was, I had to love it. I have the tendency to throw something together in order to complete a project with out truly waiting for what I really want.  This project had me leaving many errand sessions empty handed, but the end results have been worth it for us.

So here is the "after." It was completed right before Christmas and we have been loving our new space ever since.

The biggest challenge for Erik was taking us from carpet to a stone tile floor, it saved us an INSANE amount of money to DIY this, and totally worth it. 

Hopefully these photos will inspire some ideas for someone else to tackle that looming project, or even a drawer that needs a good organization session spent on it.

Some space allocated for relaxing, music making, and a little exercise.

Our craft space!

The above right corner is a refurbished "dry sink" turned gift wrap center.  We have added a few dowels for rolls of wrapping paper and ribbon, and the cute little drawers and cupboards give plenty of space for bows, tape, tissue paper and flat wrap. 

The top left is my favorite piece, a Cafeteria Table- heavy, sturdy and with its swivel chairs makes for easy sweeping up underneath.

Accessories-The FUN stuff!

I found this wall art that just so happened to be the very songs my paternal and maternal Grandmas used to sing to me and thought they'd bring the perfect inspiration to the room.

This large metal bottle cap served as our color palette/inspiration for the whole room-rusted in just the right places.
The bottom hutch is filled up with little glass jars holding buttons, 
staple refills, paper clips and twine.

Hayley's dress form for her sewing area.

This table I scoured Craiglist adds for, then the internet, craft stores, and countless furniture stores. I finally found this table made of a refurbished barn door , with its base constructed of a Singer sewing machine circa 1901- our favorite feature is the pump-style pedal that still works!

This storage cabinet is sturdy, metal, and is deep enough to store all of our 12x12 crafting paper, games, paper cutters- just about everything we could ever need in a craft room. The metal dress form on top is a find I stumbled upon at a repurposing store, and the red metal vintage mail box is presently filling with
sweet notes just in time for Valentine's Day.

This metal cabinet above stores oversized glass jars of glue sticks, crayons and scotch tape. (We seem to always be running low on Scotch tape around here.) The galvanized steel organizer drawers hold all paints, glitter, and glue gun accessories.

  The other half of the metal cabinet houses our "tunes"- perfect to fit our docking station, cd player, and also our newest fun find- a vintage record player to play our favorite new albums in vinyl form.

The last 2 pics are from the space right outside the Hobby Room and was included in my allocated budget. This space hadn't seen a face lift in the last 14 years and was needing some attention, I found a gray lamp shade on sale and went from there, using black and white blown up photos from some of our favorite travels so far!

One final note, working on a restricted budget can be a challenge- it usually takes us about 5 times the amount of time and effort.  We have also found that these turn out to be our favorite rooms we have redone. 
Oh the thrill of the hunt! 

We went to all kinds of stores for the purchases in this space, (it took a village); World Market,(work their sales and coupons), Target, Pier 1, Kirklands, Amazon, local refurbishing stores-I have a list of favorites, Marshalls, and Anthropologie. I landed sales on 100 percent of my findings- if you have any specific location questions shoot me a message and hopefully my memory can lead you in the right direction!

If you need a neutral gray paint color that isnt "blue," try Behr paint- Dolphin Fin