The Craft Room… or Studio… depending on who’s asking.

When we moved into this house, we wanted a spare room for guests and a room which we could use as a studio. The manbeast paints. I make jewellery. Obviously there is a need for some creative space where we can set up comfortably and not have our stuff taking over other areas of the house… like the dining table… The dining table which we have been able to eat at maybe a handful of times since we bought it because said painting and jewellery-making took over the only bit of workable space we had but that’s a whole other story.

The room we chose remained devoid of any practical use from the time that we moved in, however nature hates a vacuum – as with all “spare rooms”, it turned into a storage area. Slowly piles of junk and debris grew. Dust bunnies ran amok and we ended up with, well, this…

And thus begins the transformation of Casa del Ren – also known affectionately as Castle Voyager when the manbeast is involved.

I got tired of the mess and the fact that our very expensive dining table was taken up all the time with either painting or beading stuff (or both when it was really chaotic) and declared that it was time to clean out the back room.

The manbeast agreed.

And nothing got done for a few more months.

But we did eventually decide that a couple of weekends ago was the time to get a start, so we spent a couple of hours passing boxes out of the room and we ended up with a beautiful (mostly) empty shell:

Looks lovely, eh? Too bad we have to fill it up with stuff again.

Remember – nature hates a vacuum.

Finally, after much debate about what we would be doing with room and how it was going to be set up, I was surfing that new fabulous time-waster, Pinterest, came across this picture and thought we could definitely do something like it, only sans creepy at-home-schooliness:

 

From this perspective, the room’s layout looked pretty close to ours and I really liked the idea of a table in the centre of the room with shelves lining the walls. Considering our room had a full-length inbuilt wardrobe taking up one wall, putting a desk against one of the other walls would have severely limited the space we had. It just made sense to make use of the floorspace.

So in the end we decided on some white “Max” shelves from Fantastic Furniture. We got both the tall variety as well as a few of the short, stumpy ones to fit under the window – and managed to buy out the local store of their entire supply while we were at it. So we had to go to the Geelong store to get the last of the short ones (there were two intended for under the window, not just one.)

After a few hours of hammering, arguing, and general putting-things-together-ness, we had shelves! And we’d unboxed the Very Expensive Display Cabinet from Hardly Normal (you can figure out where it actually came from) that we’d bought for showing off our various wares.  (That was what was in the big box in the other photos.)

Tadah!

It was pretty much left at that for the weekend – we were buggered! We’d thrown some stuff on the shelves and a handful of important stuff into the cabinet, but that was it. However this weekend we popped down to what’s swifty becoming our favourite shop to buy a table  and some chairs.   We carried on with the white theme.  I know I’ve been ranting about how I am over the whiteness of the house but I figured white was as good as any colour. It’s bright, it’s a clean slate. It’s like looking at a fresh notebook before you start scribbling. I kind of like it for a craft room.

Anyway, this is the finished product…

 

As you can see, there’s now two shelves under the window. That’s my spot for my beady stuff.  I bought a few boxes, though I do need to go and get some more, I think.  The dark purple adds a bit of colour and order to the mayhem that is sure to become my shelves.  The manbeasts shelves are, of course, the big ones on the other wall. The still-empty set of shelves is up for grabs. Whoever gets there first, wins.  Above that will be an awesome picture by Larry Elmore (one of a bunch I bought for the manbeast as a housewarming-and-thankyou-for-moving-house-without-my-help-because-I-was-at-a-hens-party present when we moved in) that I’ve fallen in love with – we just need to put that up. Need a stud-finding gadget that works, first. The picture is big.

The other picture that’s already up is a blue moody piece by a use-to-be-friend who gifted it to me.  Still love her work. Sad we’re no longer mates. It still gets pride of place with my stuff though.

Oh yeah, the rooster on the shelf?  That’s Frederick von Chickenburger, the room mascot.