Room Redux at My House ~ Part II

The handsome husbands shoe room is progressing slowly. Apparently loading shoes onto racks is a tedious and time consuming task.

It is woefully apparent that I have vastly underestimated the volume of shoes that need to be housed! The amount of shelves needs to be doubled to even have a chance of holding most of his collection. Keep in mind this shelving is 8 feet high by 12 feet wide. You’d think they would fit right? NO!

The important thing is that I think this is making him happy. At the very least its got to be easier for him to find that one missing shoe now.

Now for the good part. My daughters room has been sitting vacant except for her occasional visits home from college in San Francisco, for 2 1/2 years now. I have been thinking about commandeering it for my art / sewing studio for awhile but just couldn’t get going. I think I am still in denial about her being grown up and living out of state.

Since most of my art and sewing supplies were stored in the shoe room it was only natural to extend my room makeover to my daughters room as well so I would have a place to put everything taken out of the shoe room. I know – crazy – it’s like a Chinese fire drill of room contents around here. My goal for this room, after spending a small fortune on “cheap” shelving for the shoe room, was to use only stuff I had around the house and in the garage. ( trust me – there is plenty of stuff here to use) The only thing I am allowing myself to spend money on is the white paint for the furniture.

The first order of business was to have my wonderful son Geordie, who is home for the summer, tear out the carpet. I plan to paint the floor white for now since I am not allowing myself to buy flooring.

My sister bought this fabulous metal cart for her home office and when it arrived she realized that it was too big to fit through the door of her room! So naturally, she gave it to me for my birthday! Its actually fantastic because its on casters and it will slide right under the center of my worktable and pull out easily when I need additional table space. Right now it is the painting center.

For the rest of the pieces I need I am using furniture that I designed and had built for my husbands old office at work which he brought home last year after moving into a bigger office. I tried to give this stuff away about ten times over the past year but had no takers. Boy, am I glad I kept it! It is going to work out perfectly. Its a bunch of cubes of different shapes and sizes – some with drawers – some with shelves – that can stack into different configurations.

These cubes are the perfect height for my work table when I stack two on top of one another. I am painting everything white so it will blend together. The cubes were originally all bright man colors so its taking two coats of white paint to cover it up UGH!

There is even a sectiont of the old furniture that is on giant casters and can serve as a window seat.

The walls of the room are a super sunny yellow that my daughter picked out. I thought of painting them but they remind me of her so I am keeping them for now. They just need a bit of touch up from the thousands of nail holes she put in the walls over time !

The only furniture I kept from my daughters stuff was her dresser and hutch for storage.

One of the great features of this room is that is has an enormous closet that has its own window. In fact, this room has four windows in it so its super sunny and has great natural light all day long.

I am so blessed to have such a great home and to be able to create such a great working space for myself – I feel a little bit guilty taking over so much room in the house but since its just sitting there unused I am sure I will get over it. I am so excited – I can't wait till it's done.

* If you have a great studio – workroom – craft room or whatever room – I would love to see it and possibly share your photos here on my blog. Please send me some pics to jackie_vontobel at msn.com