Guest/Sewing Room Makeover

Hello there. I'm back. Did you miss me? I said in the last post that I'd show you where my awesome china cabinet now resides. It's not in the kitchen or dining room. It's in our guest/sewing room. What?!? Who says a piece of furniture has to be used for its intended purpose? It doesn't store china, but it is used for storage. I'll show you that in a bit.

First off, let's see what the room used to look like.

Um, yuck! When we first moved in, this was our son's room, and for a short period, it was my husband's office space. (The white rectangle on the wall is a fold up desk he used when he worked on other people's computers). Then it just kind of became a holding zone for things we didn't know what to do with as I re-organized other spaces in the house.

You can't see it very well in the above photo, but we never painted the inside of the closet. This is what most of the walls in the house looked like when we bought this place. GROSS!!! I have no idea what caused this, and no amount of scrubbing made it go away, but I was determined to get it painted this time.

We still don't know what that pipe sticking out of the wall is for.

This is my inspiration piece. I hoped to make this room both a guest room and sewing room. We made this cute piece at a Stampin' Up meeting, and I just loved it. It kind of has a sewing theme to it, and I love the colors.

All the walls (including the closet) got two coats of a soft yellow paint. Much better! This closet was going to be used for storing sewing material and miscellaneous craft supplies so the original closet rod and shelf wasn't going to work. I went back and forth trying to figure out how to put shelves in here, then, while we are at the store, we happened upon these metal ones and they were half off! With my husband's ingenuity, we made them fit. Woo hoo! You really don't want to see what it looks like right now. Let's just say those shelves are quite full.

This is the wall opposite the closet. The little houses on the wall house my thimble collection. Thought this was the perfect place for them. The houses were all bought at different yard sales and were all different colors so I just spray painted them a deep brown so they would play together a little nicer.

Apparently this bed is the perfect napping spot.

Look what I found at a yard sale the same time I was working on the china cabinet. Isn't it perfect? It's an old, chippy metal table with two leaves that pull out. The wood trim under the table was a very poorly done white paint job. My first intention was to sand it slightly to smooth it out a bit and just repaint it, but it wasn't working, so I used some paint stripper to remove all the paint and then stained the wood the same as the china cabinet.

Here it is with one of the leaves pulled out. The perfect spot to do some sewing.

And, here she is, as promised. My lovely china cabinet that is now a wrapping station and storage cabinet. Isn't she beautiful? The upper cabinets are holding some of my Bible study and various crafting books. My serger is the white ghost looking thing on the shelf. Some day I will make a proper cover for it, now that I know where all my sewing stuff is. ;o)

The bottom drawers are the perfect place for wrapping supplies. This drawer already had dividers in it for silverware, which works perfect for organizing ribbon and bows.

This drawer holds LOTS of tissue papers. It's so much easier to find just the right color now that I don't have to drag a box out of the closet (from under other boxes) to find them.

 And the bottom two drawers have LOTS of gift bags. All shapes, sizes and holidays.

One of the two side doors holds empty gift boxes, and the other holds sewing supplies. Speaking of sewing supplies, this little tea cabinet we got when we lived in Japan holds all my threads and other sewing tools. It's finally found a home. :o)

And, finally, here's where my inspiration piece ended up. Right now the table is up as a temporary holding spot for some of my flowers. The basket underneath holds a blanket I've been working on for about 5 years now. Sigh. I really should try and finish that up sometime.

Well, there you have it. A little tour of my summer time project. I have to say I am loving it. Before Christmas I spent many hours in here sewing some gifts for my daughter. I am hoping to get back in here soon to work on some other projects I have been asked to do. Sigh. So many crafts...so little time.