Project 16: Painting the Craft Room

We got another room painted! I'm so excited to start seeing the fruit of our labor. As LJ said last night, "It's starting to actually look like a house." 

You may remember from the house tour that we have this tiny room that used to be a bedroom. I say used to because when they revamped the hall bathroom they stole square footage from this room and so now it's only 8'x10.5' and has no closet. It's too small for a bedroom but just right for a craft room!

Here's the before picture, the room just had some random stuff that got placed there:

First step was to clear it out and prep it for painting (put down tarp, take faceplates off of outlets, take down old blinds, tape edges of window sill, ect.

I decided to pant the far wall gray and the others white. Trying to create an optical illusion that the room is a little bit bigger than it is. The floor boards running side to side will help visually push the walls out. The gray wall will look further back because it is darker and the whole room should feel less cramped. At last that's the plan. :)

I used the darker gray left over from the Dining Room project. Why the darker gray? Because I had plenty of it left over. This is after one coat of gray. You can tell that the yellow is not completely covered (click on the picture and it will get bigger).

Two coats of gray worked great. Sorry the picture isn't great, I took all of these at different times of day as the paint dried. But trust me, the gray looked good after two coats.

 Next I painted the other three walls with two coats of white paint. The paint had built in primer, so I didn't bother to prime it first. Two coats worked great, except for the edges. You can kind of tell in this picture that the yellow is poking through.

 Here is my attempt to take a picture of a white wall with a white ceiling and the thin edge that isn't quite white... yeah, not so easy. But maybe you can see that the edge is slightly darker because the yellow is coming through.

 A third coat on the trim and the room was done! Yay!

So here is a beautiful after picture:

But I didn't stop there, I planned out where to put my furniture. Now, I've got dreams of the perfect craft room and it's beautiful, but right now I'm working with what I have. When fixing up a house spending money on pretty craft room furniture just isn't high up on the priority list. I'm just happy to finally have a place I can work on all my little hobbies and call my own. :)

Here's the layout I made to explain the room... yes, it's from Paint...by my neat floorplanner.com version isn't working right now. (grrrr)

The sewing table is under the window, opposite the door. I've planned it out so that I can have a table dedicated to sewing, which will by definition get messy mid projects. The ironing board is close by, since I use it a LOT when sewing, and located next to an outlet. Then my old art desk is now my 'cutting table'. I've put it in the middle of the room to give me access to three sides. When cutting a pattern out you have to be able to cut from many different angles. My goal is to always keep this table clean of clutter. It will also be used for any other craft project but I don't want to let it collect stuff because when you need a clean area to cut something out it's annoying to have to stop and put everything away. Where am I going to put all the many crafting supplies? That's what the storage area is for. For now, it's a bookcase I've had since childhood, but in the future I'd like to get an actual hutch and paint it a fun color. :) Ok, here are the pictures of what the room looks like with the furniture it in:

Not going to lie, it's now my favorite room of the house. I L.O.V.E. it. It makes me want to start working on projects right away!

Let's see that before and after again:

SO much better!!!



Project cost: $28 - I used existing painting supplies and old paint. Only thing I had to buy was another gallon of white (ran out mid-room)

Time: Got it all done in one weekend while working on other things (it's a pretty small room). It took maybe 6 hours total.

Difficulty: Easy. As. Pie. :)