Hello Friends. 🙂
A long time ago I told you we were working on fixing up my craft closet. Well, it’s finally done!
Actually it’s been done for over a month now, but we finished it just before my mom came. My craft room doubles as our guest room and I forgot to take pictures before she got here. And while she was staying with us, she had a bunch of stuff in the room, which made it non-conducive to photograph. 😉
So now it’s time for the big reveal!
This is what it looked like before. But in fact, this isn’t even a true before. This is more of an intermediate stage. Before we had that white drawer set, there was a smaller set of 3 drawers full of random junk. So this was already a major step up. As you can see in the picture, I had tried to make a cheap ribbon storage system using old curtain rods, which I hung up where the closet rod used to be. It was a huge failure, especially with ribbon rolls that weren’t very full. They would constantly unspool themselves. It was great. I had random piles of things in this closet, and even more random piles of things outside the closet. And half the things I had didn’t have any place to really belong so they got shoved away willy-nilly when we had guests. But no more!
Here’s what it looks like now! Aaaahhhhh. It’s like a huge sigh of relief. Not only does it not look so messy, I now have a place for everything! Phew.
Before we fixed up this closet, I HATED this room. I hated trying to craft in here, and every time I had a project to do, I’d get so frustrated trying to find things. Not to mention trying to put them away afterward.
Here’s a little visual breakdown of the pieces we used to make this closet work.
I decided to go with a black & white theme because it seemed the easiest to get matching pieces without buying everything from the same place. The big drawer pieces and the drawer shelf are from Ikea. The small drawers, while they look very similar, are a Martha Stewart piece I found clearanced at the hardware store. The boxes are from Hobby Lobby and Michael’s.
The upper two shelves are the ones previously in the closet that we painted white. We bought matching brackets for all the shelves from Ikea. The small drawer piece is quite heavy, so we reinforced the shelf. We planned to put it where it currently is, then I changed my mind and thought about putting it on the shelf above, which is why you see a small wood piece under that shelf that we forgot to paint green.
The top shelf still holds sort of random things. Maybe at some point I’ll get some black or white boxes to put other things in to curb the visual clutter. Those things are ones I don’t use often anyway.
On one side wall, I have my thread. I got this thread rack from JoAnn Fabrics. This area of the closet also contains my sewing machine and a tabletop ironing board, as well as some other miscellaneous sewing items.
You might have noticed that in the “before” picture, we had previously stored wrapping paper in this closet. However, we decided it made more sense to move that to a different part of the house so we could more effectively use the closet space.
On the other side of the closet, we got 2 ribbon storage units. These were more expensive than I would have wanted, but I couldn’t find an alternative that I thought would work for me and fit in the closet.
In the wide set of drawers, I have sewing-related items.
The narrow set holds primarily paper crafting items. Like cards.
And stamps. The deeper drawers in the bottom of this unit hold some fabric, too.
And this is perhaps the most miraculous part of this transformation:
I have an empty drawer!!!!!!!! I actually currently have more space in this closet than I need. That’s pretty much a miracle.
So there it is, friends. I’m so happy with this transformation.
Here’s a side-by-side to illustrate again the dramatic change.
I was also going to show you how I make the rest of the room work as both a crafting space and a guest room, but this post is plenty long as it is, so I think I’ll just make another post about it later.
In the meantime, I hope this inspires you!