CraftRoomArtStudioSalon

As I wrote in my last post (in November...argh), Erik and I moved into a house, which has afforded us a great deal more space than our beloved former apartment. Over the past six months, we've been chipping away at projects around the house. Erik tends to focus on electrical projects (yay for networking the house!). I tend to rearrange, paint, and rearrange again. Surprise! Today's post follows the painting and set up of the Craft Room/Art Studio/Salon. (Erik has chosen to call it "The Salon," which the dramatic part of me enjoys quite a bit.) 

Let's start with some background on our house. Our house is two stories. The first floor contains a living room, kitchen, half bath, dining room, and..."parlor." The people who lived here before us had some random sitting furniture in the "parlor" and some lacy curtains. Also, the walls were seafoam green. I dislike the idea of having a room that is only used on holidays and when you feel the need to sit on the expensive furniture you bought because you bought it. I decided to re-appropriate this room and make it into my office and craft room/art studio. I started with the idea that I wanted the room to be bright, happy, and have an orange wall. You can check out the room's evolution below:

The first step in getting the room ready for painting was to clear  it out. Erik and I had to make several trips upstairs with boxes of craft supplies, which made me wonder how I had accrued so much stuff. I thought about this again when I was unpacking everything...

Next to the "parlor" is a flowery wallpapered dining room. It has a plastic crystal chandelier. Someday it will be painted as well.

The wall you're looking at will be ORANGE in a short while.

Before I painted the walls, I needed to paint the ceiling, which was pretty dingy.  Before I painted the ceiling, I needed to pull the recessed lights out of their sockets and cover them up. I read about how to do this on-line, and managed not to electrocute myself.

This is a rather blurry and unfortunate picture that I want to include because it shows more of the prep. work I did. I taped clear plastic along the baseboards in order to protect the floor. I then covered most of the floor with a canvas tarp.

This picture is much less blurry and unfortunate. It shows the supplies I used: Sponges and a bucket to clean the walls; spackle and wood filler to fix the many holes in the walls and woodwork; paint caulk to fill in gaps in the woodwork; rollers, paintbrushes, paint stirrers, primer, and ceiling paint. Missing from this picture are painter's tape and sandpaper. If you want your walls to look flat and, well, nice, you will need to sand them. A lot. .

This picture displays the finished painted ceiling and the beginning of my spackling work.

I spackled many, many holes, and also sanded and re-sanded areas in which the former tenants of our home had done a lousy painting job. There is no reason to brush paint onto the middle of a wall when you can roll it on. NO reason.

Though the paint I used contained primer, I decided to prime all of the walls beforehand  as a safeguard against former tenant wall goo seeping through the lovely "bleached slate" color I had chosen for three of the walls.

In this picture, you can see the painted "bleached slate" wall against the wall that will be orange. Also, all of the brown woodwork was primed and painted after I finished with the walls.

Orange wall!!!! The baseboard and window are not yet painted.

EVERYTHING painted. Even the window. It was a nice feeling.

We need to stop here for a moment because the next set of pictures address the second stage of the craft room/art studio/salon. My good friends, Scott and Erica, told me about some furniture that Scott's parents were trying to get rid of--specifically a large dresser. I had been on the hunt since before we moved to locate some kind of hutch or shelving unit in which to keep the majority of my craft supplies. I went to see the dresser, and it was perfect. Oh, and FREE, which made it even more perfect. I repainted and changed the hardware on the dresser to give it an update.

Scott's parents had had this dresser for 40 years! It is solid wood and full of drawers. Again, perfect.

This is the hutch that goes with the dresser. I ended up removing the mirror from the hutch  so that I could use the space to store more supplies.

Before I could paint the dresser, I needed to sand it. YAYYYYY.

After I finished painting the dresser and the hutch, I worked on the drawers.

Huzzah! It's finished. In typical Chrissy fashion, I decided to put the dresser against the orange wall after I took this picture. Erik is a good sport and helped me move it.

Desk assemblage came next, with a bit of updating to the desk. I covered the flat part of the desk with fabric and attached cork circles to the side of the shelves so that I would have extra space to hang pictures and doo-dads and whatnot.

Now the unpacking begins. How did I acquire so much stuff??!

More unpacking and organizing...

And then....FINISHED! 

Also, I bought an awesome chaise lounge for lounging and crafting and drinking coffee on.

Desk all set up. I'm storing my yarn in the white boxes, which is a much better system than the basket family I was using.

Everything is PUT AWAY. I'm enjoying it.

So that's the story of how the craft room came together. Since I finished, I've been doing some sewing, crocheting, and thinking about what I'll do next.