Craft room re-moved!

A while ago I showed you what I did in my scrapbook/craft room in this post. Wellll turns out we need the extra bedroom for a friend who needs somewhere to live. That means I needed to get creative with other spaces in my home to move my scrapbook area to. Right outside the extra bedroom is this rather large hallway, but more of a nook area...

The cabinet was storing linnens for the downstairs bedrooms, but after cleaning out my upstairs linnen closet, there was tons of room up there for that stuff. Poor kids are going to have to walk allll the way up stairs to get clean sheets. I think they will be ok. 

Thanks for the concern.

So I knew that I had almost no money to spend on this little project. I did have a little birthday money left, all tucked away for just this type of decorating emergency. After a trip to the ReStore, I was soo happy with the $42 I spent on all of this:

It took me a while at the store to make a plan, but once I figured it out...

shabammm!

See these pretty ugly particle board bookshelves?

Well with a couple of my favorite friends:

Old barnwood from my barn

Trusty Chopsaw

And good ol' air compressor

I measured, and cut, and nailed, and cut some more, 

and broke a nail!

Danggettt!!

After I got over my nail breakage, I stood back and this is what I had made...

I cut the two bookshelves in half, and put them one in front of the other to give it more depth. I then nailed the barnwood to the sides which served to hold the two bookshelves together nicely. Finally I trimmed out the front with some narrower barnwood I had. The wood counter-top was $4.00. Yes, that is four dollars! When my money tree has finished blooming I will do one of my counter top finishes on it and it will be spectacular!! You have to look into the future a little with me sometimes, cuz it all cain't happen at once ya know!

I moved one of my shelving units out of the scrapbook room and hung it, but then I've been a sicky-poo and don't have the strength to hang the other one yet. You'll have to wait a bit to see pictures of that. More to come on this project for sure! Just gotta get feeling better so I can do the fun stuff and not this computer sitting around stuff! 

So I know it's still a little rough, but what do ya think so far??

Too rustic for you? 

Just wait and see what's next!

 Can't wait to show y'all!

I'm just "floored" over this one! Plywood floors!

My last couple of posts have been pretty "word-y" with not a lot of pictures of fun projects.

Be prepared.

This one is different.

I'm about to dump a bunch of pictures through the screen and on to your lap!

I hope you enjoy the journey.

We start our little pictorial skip through time wayyyy back in last fall when my studio-to-be looked like this:

My oh my...it seems like forever ago! 

After week after week of hard labor, demolition and rebuilding, we went through these stages: 

I decided to do a plywood floor with a vision in my head of doing something fun with the plywood. There are a lot of really great pictures online of amazing floors done with 

plain ol' plywood! Who'da thunk?!

 Rather than laying down the 4x8 panels I had the nice young man at the lumber yard cut them in half, giving me 4'x4' squares. They were much easier to handle, and I thought it would look better anyway. I just screwed them down right to the wafer board (which was  glued and nailed to the existing 2'x6' plank floor) I alternated the way the grain went, just 'cuz I'm like that.

Next started the fun part! I raided my stockpile of odds and ends stain, and paint and went to work.

I have a picture of one of my favorite stains, love it.

As for the other squares, sorry, I was too wrapped up in the process to stop to take pictures, but I used Annie Sloan chalk paint, and a couple of other odd cans of this and that I had. 

I got all of the solid colors down and once again skipped the ever important progression photo and went right on to the next step. When doing something as busy as this I feel that there needs to be something to tie it all in together. I decided to stain over all of them with the same stain so that they would all have a common hue to them. Some of them I applied the stain all over and then wiped it off, others I just "skipped" the brush lightly over the surface while it was filled with stain to create a little more variance. I love how it turned out! 

My beat up stairs got a good coat of stain.

Have to say I have a little crush on my stairs.

I think they are cute.

Yes, I'm not normal.

I know this.

Stairs before:

 This is the stain I used over everything, as well as my stairs:

Love the rustic look of the stairs up close:

It wasn't hard to make them look rustic, they've been through a lot in the last few months, no need to bang them up, the construction zone did that for me!

One last look at the floor:

Pretty busy I know, but it's just a little reflection of me!

I mean, why do something simple when you can make a lot of work for yourself and complicate things a whole bunch?! Besides, who can decide between just one finish when there is soooo many choices? Might as well do them all, RIGHT?

You know what they say:

"You can tell a lot about a person by the finish on their floors."

What?

No one's ever said that?

Well, maybe they should have.

Alright. Although the squares with Annie Sloan Chalk paint don't need to be sealed, the others definitely do, sooo...

I'm off to put a few good coats of sealer on it before I can say it's done! 

What do you think?

Not sure I'd do this in my house, but not bad for an art studio right?

Waiting in line.....

Do you ever feel like you are living in some kind of time warp? Does it sometimes feel like the stars are still and everything is in sloooowwww motion? Like when you are waiting in line at Disneyland in the scorching sun and there is a small child who is screaming about the potty and his batman underwear. Sometimes it seems that the one thing you are waiting for can't come soon enough, and sometimes it seems that it will be sooo long before it happens! On the other hand, in this time warp, things fly by so fast that you hardly remember what happened last week because of the multitude of events since then. At the same time that everything is moving in slow motion life is whizzing by like a

Jack Russell Terrier in the morning.

Well, that has been my life for the past few months. Remember the barn? Refer to my earlier post of the before pictures. Here is where we are as of a few days ago...

Love fresh lumber and straight lines! progressssssss :)

My Studio area. New floors that will not give way under my feet is a plus!

Windows and, yes, a potty for my future bathroom! Got them all at the
Habitat for Humanity Re-Store! LOVE that place! 

Studio area, plumbed for my Utility sink and washer/dryer to clean all those messy rags! :)

Where the potty will sit :O

We got Plumbing!!!!

This is an old gas tank that was in all the "stuff" piled high in here when we cleaned it out.
We are going to modify it and turn it into my utility sink! Gonna be sooo cool!

Possibly a confusing picture, but I like it! I'm so happy I get to keep the inside of the roof the way it is, with just a few new boards for added support. This just makes my heart go pitter-pat!

Not a bad view out the front!

Who's gonna clean up this mess!!! My backyard is a construction zone!

So while I'd love to be posting pictures of all of the wonderful pieces of furniture I have in storage waiting to be loved on a little I will have to be content with pictures of my dream in the making. I talked at the start of this post about waiting in line at Disneyland. I'm tellin' ya, I CAN"T wait to get on this ride!!!

I wanna ride! I wanna ride! I wanna ride!

*sigh*