Miscellaneous: May 2007 Archives
While some folks were off enjoying Maryland Sheep and Wool, I was at home helping to direct some of the house organizational changes that need to happen before the baby arrives. Given that my fiber room is becoming the nursery, that room has to get emptied out before nursery building can begin. That means moving most of my craft stuff to other locations and creating a better crafting space in my office area -- which I chose because it's well lit and close to my main computer area. We decided to start with creating the new workspace first, since it would allow me to move a number of things from my old space in an orderly fashion.
My parents were coming to visit this weekend, and my dad, handy guy that he is, helped John with the process of making it happen quickly and smoothly. I did almost nothing -- but I do have some photographic evidence of the transformation.
This was my corner of the office before the process started. The bookcases are mostly empty because the first part of the process involved moving a bunch of my books downstairs into some new bookcases we bought for our guest room. Yes, I know, I have a lot of clutter. Part of this re-organization process is also for me to start reducing some of that. John and I are both world champion pack rats when we want to be.
With the help of my Mom, Dad and John, all the remaining stuff got moved out of the bookcases. The big bookcase got moved into my bedroom (where I am creating a small reading nook (probably there will be pictures of this later) and the bookcase on the right moved to the other side of the room (John's half of the office) where it will be used to help organize some computer stuff.
The new workspace needed to include shelving up to the ceiling. John and my Dad decided on using a system that involves hanging the vertical brace pieces down from a horizontal support. The cool thing about this is that you don't need to drill holes in the wall for anything but the horizontal support.
Once that horizontal support is in place, it's a simple matter to hang the vertical supports, put in the shelf braces and place the shelves. All this stuff came from the Home Depot. The shelves are nice because all Dad and John had to do was trim them down to the size they liked. They are melamine shelves with an oaky looking color to match my desk and the trim on the workspace top.
My Dad, who built the workspace top, decided that the best way to create a flexible workspace for me was to create a top that "floated" and didn't have any supports that would get in the way of me putting a chair under the top at any location. These oak pieces were attached to the wall to provide some additional strength for the cantilevers he was using to help support the top. The opening is just to provide access to the electrical socket and cable and phone connections.
My Dad built the worktop at home with some melamine he had and trimmed out the front edge with an oak edge to give it a nice decorative touch. It's 30" deep so that I have a workspace that can be a nice place to sew, but can also support doing a little cutting, paper art, pattern design, or whatever other thing I can think of to do there. John installed the lights over the desk to help give me a fully lit workspace. The lights are standard fluorescent assemblies with OTT lights in them so I'll have natural daylight colors. It's hard to see, but my dad drilled two holes into the back of the top so that electrical cords for the lights and my sewing machine could run down underneath (Treese doesn't like a lot of exposed cables, my husband tells my dad -- clearly he knows me well). Those holes have those nice plastic inserts that you find in office desks for cabling to help keep things neat and to prevent jagged edges from snagging anything.
Here's the finished space, complete with my sewing machine installed in its new home. To further polish the area, John bought cord covering conduit to cover the cords from the light fixtures and mounted a powerstrip underneath the top to support the lights and the sewing machine and whatever else I want to plug in there. Et Voila! I now have 80" of new workspace, a collection of lovely shelves to move books and craft components onto (those boxes on the shelves are something that I found at Joann for scrapbooking, but which work awfully nicely for storing fabric and quilt blocks). It's a perfect dedicated living space for my sewing machine with a reasonable workspace to support my sewing projects. And having a dedicated crafting area should help me keep my computer/office oriented workspace tidier and just generally give me a nicer work area.
Only a couple of things remain to be done... we are installing some "tchotzke shelves" to the left of the main shelves so that some of the small trinkets from my book case can be displayed there, and I will have some cool magnet it boards under the bottom shelf so that I can keep track of the notes I like to make for myself. Next weekend I will be treating myself to a trip to the Container Store to look for storage boxes for the top shelf to hold less used supplies, and I will likely add some additional storage (on wheels) under the desk top to hold supplies I need to have close at hand.
To say I am psyched by the potential of this new space is an understatement. It's beautiful emptiness is already inspiring me to discard things that aren't necessary and to think about how to create an organized, functional space. John and my Dad brought this whole thing together exactly as I had planned it in my head -- while my mom and I attended a bridal shower and treated ourselves to a nice trip to Quiltology. I feel lucky to have such great guys around to help make my life better.
And now the mass book and craft moving process can begin...
