I am finally beginning to see the light at the end of my Grand Playroom Redo, but I've been so bogged down in the minutia of filling up all the nooks and crannies with my never-ending supply of supplies that a part of me refuses to believe this project will indeed be completed.
I constantly fight the urge to say "I'll be finished...when pigs fly." So in an effort to keep myself On The Path, I snapped some photos to show my progress.
This is the first view of my playroom as I walk in the door. Just about everything except for my big work table, a chifferobe and a shelving unit are now in place. The floor now has various items laying about, but will be cleared out before I move that table in. It'll go up against the windowed wall, between the two wooden paper cubes, where that rolling cart is in front of the middle window. The table is 45 inches wide and 73 inches long, and will be a nightmare to move through our hallway into this room. This will be soon, maybe this week or next.
The paper cube on the right will be full as soon as I move the rest of my patterned papers.
My papers had been stored in this antique hope chest, but I finally got tired of them all closed up in there and not as accessible as I'd like, so my chest will now become blanket storage, as soon as I move it into the family room (which is why it's up on its side, waiting for the hand truck). Don't look too closely at the bottom of the chest, lol. I took the photo before I'd vaccuumed the underside of it and there were cobwebs, but no live spideys.
Can you believe that I couldn't fit all my ribbon onto my window sill spools? Yup, I also have four of these drawers filled up. And all those drawer ribbons had to be wound around cards.
While winding, I became quite attached to those Cropper Hopper 6-inch ribbon cards. And of course(!) that meant when I ran out and needed more, I could not find them. So, I had to make my own to finish that mini-project.
The drawers on the other cube are much less organized as they hold stuffed animals that were Missy's. I recently made up a bag of her stuffed animals to donate to Goodwill, but I couldn't quite part with these few little ones.
Here's the art journal paper I salvaged from mail order packing materials. Anything looks so much nicer when it's ironed, don't you think?
I finally got focussed and filled up the wall racks between the windows with my liquid adhesives and glues.
Luck was with me, because all of my glues do fit in these two racks, albeit snugly. It was one of my easier "fills"; many of my drawers were finally filled correctly on the third or fourth try. Story of my life...
Above each glue rack I have one of those multi-arm racks normally used in kitchens to hang dish towels. I've loaded them up with my spooled ribbon and tapes
Even the drywall tape -- the more stuff I can humanly place out in the visual open, the higher the likelihood it will get used... or at least not forgotten about.
Turning to the right and the next wall, this wall rack holds my nail polishes, Smooches, cheap craft paints and bingo markers. I probably shared this in the last update, but I had to re-fill it so it changed. Above shows the bottom three racks, and
here, the top three racks. I made it more sturdy by twist-wiring it in certain spots and adding a floor to each rack of chipboard.
Next on the tour is the newly filled closet, but I'll wait until next time to show those photos. Instead, I want to show a couple of up/re/cyclings that I did since you know I love to re-use stuff for new purposes. Anyone who ever had an old-school big honkin' desktop PC may have also had a big honkin' sub-woofer attached to it. This ridiculously heavy black square was ours.
It even still works, but being a true casualty of technological advance, its innards are all outdated. Still, it makes a great ottoman or stool.
It's weight and sturdy wood structure makes it plenty sound enough for me to stand on. It's only problem was that it was a bitch to move around. But with a little help from U-Glu strips and Magic Sliders, I solved that.
Hubster came home with a box of those U-Glu strips (as seen on tv), so I cut out some circles the size of the woofer's leg bottoms, turned the woofer upside down and adhered the circles. Then I took some Magic Sliders and slapped one on each woofer leg. I made sure to keep pressure for a few minutes to get good contact, then I righted the woofer and tried pushing it around with my foot. Awesomely easy now!
My other upcycle project was using some very old brads that were way too cutesy for me to ever seriously use on any art (one of those 'what was I thinking' purchases from when Missy was much younger). As the photo shows, they are balloon brads and soccer brads.
I am using sewing pattern boxes bought at Hancocks on sale to store my Cuttlebug embossing folders and Tim Holtz Texture Fades. But because the boxes are already decorated on the outside, I wanted to use temporary labelling in case I ever need to re-use the boxes. So, I got out my trusty Big Bite Crop-a-Dile and punched me some holes to brad the labelling. No, not my best artwork, but it does the trick until I want to improve the look, if ever. I still have a ton of drawers and containers to label, and will probably do this on all my paper boxes, and save the tape for my plastic surfaces.
Well, that is more than enough for now! Thanks for hanging in there with me on this leg of the update tour. It's a lot of photos to deal with, but I'm glad I'm sharing my progress. It helps me to stay my course to cross that finish line. Gawd, I hope it's soon. I need to create again!
And who knows...I just might see some winged swine before it's all over! winkwink
