Archive | craft room RSS feed for this section

Home Renovations: Craft Room, Part 2

13 Jan

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission at no cost to you! When you purchase through the links provided, you will be supporting Brittany Bower and helping to bring new content to the site!

So, as happens with most renovations (using my own experience along with the stories from just about every home renovation show on HGTV as evidence), mine did not gone quite as planned either. As mentioned before, and was the most important point for me to keep in mind, is that the carpet was staying – I would have loved to replace it, I hate brown! – but as this is not the Dream House, it just didn’t make sense financially considering the excellent condition of the current carpet. I know, we checked! So Chris recommended some sticky stuff that most contractors use – a self-adhesive protective plastic film – that we were able to get from Amazon. However, due to something (not sure exactly what) it would not stay stuck to the carpet, though it obviously works well usually since it has no problem sticking to itself.

Self-adhesive protective plastic film from Amazon

Since this didn’t work out, Chris suggested a tarp instead and that worked much better. With that settled, the next step was to take off the baseboards – these are being replaced (still on the to do list), thank goodness! It wasn’t too difficult, but since I did it myself while Chris was at work, I had to resort to YouTube for how to do it.

The tarp is down, the baseboards are off, and most of the loose paint has been removed.

So while it may have not been necessary, and I was told by more multiple people that I created a lot of unnecessary work for myself, I did skim coat and then sand all of the walls. The previous owners simply painted over a lot of rough areas without cleaning first and it was driving me crazy, some of which was previous wallpaper.

About 3/4 of the way through skim coating

Had I not paid such close attention to the walls, I may have missed this detail. Now, I have piece of mind and know a little more of the house’s history.

The previous wallpaper

Now the fun began – color could finally start being put on the walls!!!  And I gave Chris the sad news (only for him) that the project can’t be purely mine.  I still needed him for a few items….

Once the ceiling was painted, he installed the new fan I picked out.  Next to the wall color, this was the part I was most excited about. The fan portion of the last one had stopped working and the Craft Room gets pretty warm during the day. It also didn’t provide much light so I had to supplement. With new LED light bulbs equivalent to 100 watts each and 5000k for a more natural daylight look, I now have plenty of light without stray cords running down the walls.

A new fan and ceiling light

But, since it is ultimately MY projects and is MY room, I finally fulfilled a life long dream of having a PINK room and could not be happier.  (Inside story to this…at the store I thought it was too light.  Then, I started cutting it in and thought it might be too bright.  Although I was giddy about the prospect of my pink room, this thought still  continued as I covered the walls in the color and when I was finally finished.)

A girl’s dream of a pink room realized!

I have slowly been moving back in and arranging it to work better for me. It may have been extra work, but with smooth walls and fresh paint, I feel much calmer in the room and better prepared to work on my projects.

I’ve moved back in, but not everything moved back in with me 🙂

Note: Although this is a very late post, I did make the deadline of November 2nd to beat the couch delivery! And as happens with many projects, there are a couple of things still left to do. Curtains have finally been hung 🙂 but we still need to cut and install the base molding and replace the outlets and covers.

Tags:

Home Renovations: Craft Room, Part 1

24 Oct

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission at no cost to you! When you purchase through the links provided, you will be supporting Brittany Bower and helping to bring new content to the site!

Hey ya’ll! So I mentioned before that Chris and I have done a few renovations since we bought our house, some of which have worked out and others…not so much. This past week, I embarked on a new one, my craft room.

I had been doing fine with it in its current state for the past few months, but recently it had gotten out of control. Between using the items in storage – scuba, for starters – and acquiring more tools and products for making the wreaths (my brain has been on overload lately with LOTS of ideas, and I have bought more than I’ve had time to put together), I got run out of the room.

I’ve been run out of my own room

So, now it is time to do what I have wanted to do since we moved into this house – redo the room. But, as Chris has told me that this is MY project, it had not been going very quickly – it took me a week just to move everything out.

I’m about half way there

However, I do have a strict deadline of November 2nd to have it completed (our new couch arrives that day, so I will no longer have free reign of the living room). This week, all I have gotten accomplished is the moving of all of the things out of the room.

Now we’re getting somewhere

This week, I will start laying down the carpet protector, because the current carpet is staying, and will begin the actual renovation process. Stay tuned to see how it turns out.

Tags: ,

Room with a Purpose: The Craft Room

1 Oct

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission at no cost to you! When you purchase through the links provided, you will be supporting Brittany Bower and helping to bring new content to the site!

When we first found our house, it looked like it had 3 bedrooms.  This was one of my wish list items, along with 2 bathrooms and at least 1200 square feet.  Upon further research and learning about real estate, we learned that that the third room can’t be classified as a such since you have to go through the second to get to it – it doesn’t have its own access to the rest of the house – so it would instead be considered a bonus room.  This was okay, it just removed the question of which room would be the guest room and which would be the office, no big deal.

The previous owner’s Second Room – now our Office

When we moved in, we started by focusing all of our efforts on the master bedroom and getting it ready which ended up taking 3 months to finish.  In the meantime, we lived in the bonus room.  Once we officially moved into the master bedroom and essentially into the rest of the house, we found homes for the majority of our things and started to realize our own needs.  The master bedroom was the master and the second room became the office as planned, and we stored our items without a designated home, although very disorganized, in the bonus room.  Realizing the cost of setting up a guest room for as much as it would be used (we’ve now been in the house for 2 years and have yet to have overnight company), we realized that dedicating an entire room to this purpose might not be the most practical or financially efficient, so it was now a room without any real purpose.

But, towards the end of last year, it finally started to find one when Chris suggested and highly encouraged me to finally buy a sewing machine (I’d been wanting to learn how to sew my whole life). Once we got it, I obviously needed a place to put it along with everything that goes with it, so Chris and I compromised.  The Florida room would be his room and used for his gym and I would take the old “storage room” to be used for my own purposes, whatever they may end up being. 

Once Covid hit South Florida, Chris was staying at work due to needing to maintain the buildings 24/7 for his entire work week, leaving me without much to do. I am not good with entertaining myself and TV only goes so far, so I started doing jigsaw puzzles again. Thomas Kinkade is my favorite artists, so I did several of his, starting with The Nativity, which I had bought on Amazon around Christmas and never got to, and continued with as many as I could find.

Fast forward a few more months, add an obsession with a podcast and Chris mentioning the idea of making the wreaths and the purpose of the room was clearly defined – it was now the craft room and the storage room…the stuff still has to be stored somewhere. But more changes will be coming, so stay tuned!

Tags: , , , ,