Craftspace Update, I Am On Schedule!

Hi Everyone,
The ole homestead is still on hot mess! We are all running our tails off around here with all kinds of activities in addition to trying to complete the room redos. The end of the school year is upon us.  We enjoyed Rory's solo at her spring concert. She did an awesome job.  Birthdays and graduations, along with a charity project of Sam's have all added up to one heck of a busy family! I have been using vacation time to try to get the painting done and finishing the last room.  I am almost there. Before I give you all a bit of a sneak peak I wanted to show you a few of the tricky tray prizes for a charity event that Sam is participating in for a cancer fund raiser.  We made eight gift bags/baskets for the raffle and they came out great.  No bow work on these because that will be done by someone else.  The bows will dictate the ticket entry amount.  We still have 2 more to do by Monday so I know what we will be doing tomorrow.  Here are 3 of the them:

I love doing baskets.  It is so much fun filling them up with all the goodies.  I hope the event bring in lots of money for their donation.  This event is person specific and it is my understanding that this patient is in great need because in addition to being so ill he lost his home back in October when Superstorm Sandy hit Jersey.
Now the craftspace is coming along great and I really think I will make my July 3rd target date to move in.  I will be using more of my vacation time for the July 4th holiday to really be finished and moved in.  Every time I walk into the room I get excited about moving all my crafty good supplies into their new home.  Here are a few pictures of how it looks right now:

 It took us all of last weekend to install the barrel fan and the 2 tracks of lighting.  I love both the fixtures.  The track is a metal branch shape and really provides a lot of light.  There are 12 - 50 watt bulbs.  Paul installed a dimmer switch so that I can tone them down when needed.  The fan is cool too.  No more blades to clean.  It operates independently from the tracks and the little center light makes for a great night light.  The leaves on the fan and the tracks don't really match but hard as I tried I could not find a barrel fan that matched the tracks perfectly.  The wall color is called Sag Harbor and I can see on my screen the picture does not show the true color.  The green is very mossy and almost looks gray at some points of the day.

Here is a bad shot of the Ikea Billy bookcases.  I have glass doors for the center unit that need to be installed.  The first unit will hold machines, the second is for paper and the third is for supplies.  I got those green baskets from Joann's on sale for $5.99 and I had a coupon for 20% off my order. But my real find was those black bins a Lowes.  Here is the ad:

Oh yes, Score! $5.77! When I first saw them they were $14.99.  Then they went on sale for $11.54. I even saw them for $8.08 and then they posted for $5.77.  I bought every one that they had at my local store.  Now I really need to tell you I had to bump them up a bit.  I glued the frame for more strength.  This shelve got a horrible review in the online review section but I knew I could make it stronger with a bit crafty good glue! Paul is cutting a white melamine shelf for the top and they will be linked together with zip ties in the back and inside.  I am thinking this will be my ribbon storage.  I know it can handle the weight because I made one eight drawers high for Sam and it is filled with DVDs. I like these so much I made this unit too.

See the open closet in the background?  I took the doors of the closet off and that is the space for the home office.  I have so much more to do in the next 2 weeks if I want to get my things moved in by the first week of July.  I am loving it all so far and I hope you stop back a visit to see how it comes out.  Wishing you all a great weekend.
Lysa 

The Craft Room Started!

Hi Everyone,
It's a beautiful day here in Jersey and I should be out in the much needed (and awaited) sunshine. Instead I decided if I didn't get started with cleaning my newly acquired room I would not be able to paint next weekend.  I didn't get much done yesterday as I was helping Sam with 3 baskets that she needed to make for a cancer fund raiser so other than getting the furniture out of the room and lifting the carpet out not much was done.  It was really bad in there as we were kind of using that room as a dumping ground during the makeover of the other 2 rooms.  Here is the last picture I took before we started to haul out the rest of the furniture from the room:

If you could see our garage you would bust a gut laughing.  My line lately is "This place is a fireman's worst nightmare!"  Do you remember the picture of all my craft stuff loaded into the garage?(let's revisit that):

I was still able to get my car in there.  Now from digging in boxes, having all the pre-fab furniture arrive and be put together for the other 2 rooms the garage now looks like this:

Oh yeah, That's about where we are at!  See the one small exit path?  That is how we come and go.  I figure in an emergency it's single file only! And if you don't trip on cardboard or wood, you may just get out alive!  All kidding aside, I bet my car is back in the garage sometime around the end of July (or at least prior to the first snow fall).  Something tells me even after numerous trips to the recycling center there still will be a dumpster in my driveway.
Yesterday we lifted the carpet and I started to clean the room.  The floor in this room was in much better condition than Sam's (old), Rory's (new) room.  While the carpet in this room was replaced many times over the years the padding wasn't and as we touched it, it just fell apart in our hands.  With clouds of yucky red dust.  It was awful!  I said to Sam that I could not believe Rory wasn't having allergy problems living in this space.  Once all the carpet was out I swept and vacuumed for what seemed like hours.  This morning when I woke up I began cleaning the floor.  It really was not in bad condition at all.  The only real damage was from the carpet installer who cut the padding in place leaving 2 huge knife gouges in the floor.  This same damage was on the floor in the other room too. Unless the floor has a full refinish I will just have to live with them.  I didn't take a before picture of the floor but I did use the Minwax cleaner and reviver and it came out great.  Here is a picture of my nice clean and happy wood floor:

I am happy with the result and I think once the furniture is in place you won't see to much of the gouges.  I am going to paint this room green, but not the same green as the girls used.  I am looking for something along the line of  a sage or a pale olive type color. The accent colors will be black and white just as in the other rooms.  I hope to be done painting by next week end and working on my work counter and new lighting.  I am so excited that it's time for my room that my mind is racing at the thought of all my craft supplies happily in place in this new space. I just can't stop thinking about how I will be aranging things. Silly I know but crafting is the one hobby that has always been in my life.  I have just always loved haveing a bit of glue and a few bits of this and that to make something.  Better yet making something and giving it to someone.  I just get such a kick out of  that.  It's funny what keep us all going.  You know, that reason to get up and go to work thing.  This is just my thing that makes me smile.  Thanks for visiting and check back to see the paint job.
Lysa

Room 2, I'm Calling It Done!

Hi Everyone,
Oh Yeah!!! Room 2 is D-O-N-E, DONE! I thought instead of rambling on and on I would come up with a before and after picture.  Simply put I love how this room came out.  The little girl is away and hasn't seen it yet.  We made a promise that when she returned home from a family event on her Dad's side she would be able to sleep in her new room.  Paul, Sam, Leon and myself all worked our tails off to make it happen.  Here is a before picture of the room after it was emptied of all Sam's things:

Now,(trying to stay with the same general view) here is what it looks like now:

Awesome! Not a princess or the color pink in sight!  It really is her first "big girl" room.  Ok, her dolls are still here but they should be. Here are some more pictures:

I recycled an old lamp of Sam's. Paul rewired it and I added some vinyl to music it up a bit.

Painted an old mirror black and added some pre-fab dressers (wow, she has 12 drawers). Notice how there are no wires coming from the TV.  Thanks to Paul's creativity he put a faux back that he painted the same color as the wall on the shelving unit.  Saved a lot of time running the wires through the wall.  He did this for Sam too.  We recycled Sam's dvd shelves so that Rory could keep her dvds neat and in place.

Sam dug out all her American Girl things from back in the day and has decided to give most of it to her daughter.  Now, I will say most of it because every time she opened something that was an original Pleasant Co. product (other than her Samantha Parkington doll) she packed it back up.  Sorry, Rory no wicker table and chairs for you! But I will tell you Sam forked over all the late dated stuff like that bunk bed and computer desk.  I would say Rory's collection grew double in size.

I broke apart this $4.00 clock from the dollar store  and added the vinyl decal to it.  I love it, but I can hear it ticking 2 rooms away.

Sam and Leon took care of all the hanging art work.  They spent yesterday printing pictures of NYC and framing them into frames from the dollar store.  They took a little extra time with this shadow box from Target and framed Rory's ticket and Playbill.  It came out fantastic!

Last but not least, Paul was hell bent on recycling Rory's old bed.  Just not to throw out good wood.  So he created a desk for her.  It came out great!  I had some old cork boards that we painted black and added some white vinyl writing to. 
We are all so happy this room is done.  We can't wait to see the little girl enjoying it.  So what's in store for Room 3 you may ask.  Well, I have a picture of my future Craftspace and here it is:

Yup! There it is, 10'X12' of a hot mess! And here is a picture of my budget for the craft room:

Yup, 2 buckets of change! Ok, in all fairness I see a lot of quarters in there.  And I am a pretty crafty girl, so check back a see what happens to the final room of the 3 room redo.
Thanks for visiting,
Lysa