Since we moved in this house last September, we have barely been able to unpack. Something about running a business from home with a one-year-old doesn't leave a ton of time for luxuries like decorating.
Moving in right at the busiest part of my year (the holiday crush as I like to call it), also meant I just needed a workable studio space as fast as possible. One of the first places to be unpacked, in fact, was my craft room, but since then it's become very obvious that the room I'm currently occupying is just not working.
I've got way, way too much stuff, to be quite frank, and working on projects, packing orders or taking product photos is an exercise in total inefficiency. A lot of it has to do with my tools -- my stack paper cutter takes up the entire usable worktable, so I'm often making on the floor, which is just not fun or functional. Throw in the fact that this room also acts as my writing studio, houses our family files, and works as gift wrapping station -- to name just a few other uses -- and the whole scheme we've got going is just not working.
So, over the next few months, I will be moving my craft room into our finished basement, currently being under-utilized as a very nice storage closet. And my current craft room will become an office and playroom combo -- a place where I can write and blog during the day with plenty of space for our daughter Maggie to be entertained and occupied. I'm really excited to have the time to remake these spaces the right way.
The Office Before
Here's the official "before" photos of my current craft room and soon to be emptied office/playroom space. Heaven help me for putting these photos on the Pin-able internet.
Yeah, it's just not working for me, is it?
Offices needs
The new office will need to include:
- A comfortable, efficient area for writing and blogging.
- Organization for bill paying and other un-fun administration tasks.
- Room for extra office supplies, gifts and gift wrapping items.
- My product photography setup. (I still plan to use the room's natural light in my product photos, so I'll need to house the setup in this room.)
- A play space for my 1-year-old daughter, Margaret (and everything else to be toddler-friendly).
Budget
My budget for the office is teeny, tiny, barely even worth mentioning, except I will. I'll be begging, borrowing and rehabbing what I've got to the tune $100. It will mostly be used for things like spray paint and fabric. Luckily, (?) our basement is full of stuff right now, so I've got a lot of options to bring into this room.
What's staying
Because of my limited budget, I will be keeping and rehabbing the following items:
- The large, dark wood desk: The desk is my husband's and I love it. It has tons of history -- it belonged to a minister and he wrote his Sunday sermons on it every week. It's a great writing desk and it will mostly stay as-is, though I'm hoping to upgrade the drawer pulls somehow.
- The 2-drawer file cabinet: Functional but a super ugly beige color. Needs some major love.
- The white shelves: Just your basic white shelves, but they are in great shape. Time will tell if these need to be reworked to fit the new room.
- The peach walls. We originally were going to paint Maggie's room peach, but ended up painting this room instead. I need a color scheme that tones down the peach but still feels fun and bright.
Next steps
The first step will be to set up a temporary work station in the basement while I work on cleaning out these rooms.This is going to be a slow-paced project and I'll still need to be working as it moves along. We'll also be planning a garage sale for the extra stuff that will need to go to turn these, ahem, disaster areas, into happy, uncluttered rooms. Just typing that all out feels like a lot of work. Whew. Guess I should get started!
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