ABOUT THE ROOM AND PHOTOS

When my mother moved in with me after my father passed away, I promised her that she could take one of the guest bedrooms and turn it into her dream craft room. Her previous craft room was less than 1/3 the size. Mom wanted the room to be light and bright and I chose SW 7015 Repose Gray by Sherwin-Williams, a beautiful warm gray. I chose Elfa shelving from The Container Store in Driftwood and Platinum finish.

The bedroom was previously a bright blue for one of my stepsons and while I love a vivid blue (see my office for proof), it takes a certain amount of commitment to the color, because it is quite some work to go lighter again, should you decide to go in another direction. Additionally, the walls are solid hardwood paneling that had been painted over several times, and as the weather changed each season, the panels expanded and contracted, and it caused large visible cracks of cracking and peeling paint between the paneling over several decades of this. Not very sightly and something I had to fix. My solution for the problem was to sand and scrape and then add drywall joint compound in between each panel. I had to do multiple applications and the several layers had to be sanded multiple times. WIth the blue paint being sanded off, I looked like a Smurf most days until I was finally ready to apply primer and paint, 

I worked with The Container Store designers, which was great, and I highly recommend it since they know every single measurement of the Elfa components, so I let them take first crack based upon the dimensions and what Mom wanted. But they wanted to place drawers underneath both of the windows, as well as some other things which didn't make sense to me. I redesigned the room with desks under each of the two windows, both to take advantage of the light, and also because Mom needed the work space, with one area to sew and one area for a desk.I designed floor-to-ceiling shelving on one large wall, lower drawers and upper shelves on the other large wall, and various shelving and storage solutions in the rest of the room, to meet her storage needs. We placed the large center folding work table in the middle, and added new brighter overhead lighting, from Lowe's. There is also a television mounted in the room so Mom can craft and watch TV. One thing I highly recommend is the professional installation. For the time it saved, it didn't really cost that much extra. They came out and had everything installed in less than two hours one morning.

The room is quite full, but it was designed to hold as much as possible, and make maximum use of all the available space in the room, because my Mom has enough crafts to fully stock a small craft store. Mom has so many crafts in fact, that we originally didn't design the room with enough shelving and had to add two long rows of extra shelves to every wall and shelving under the television, and make use of the floor space under the bottom shelves as well for craft machines and storage bins. Once we added the extra shelves, we were able to fit everything into the room, and Mom somehow amazingly continues to find space to add more crafts. She is the most organized person I know.