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Sunday, June 21, 2009

Sewing Room Makeover

I know it has been a few months since I promised to post monthly updates to my sewing room. Well..... I had some crazy busy sewing projects going on in there with birthdays, pattern design, ren fest sewing and quilt guild.

This past week my husband "decided" to help me with the sewing room.
You have already seen the before picture......

We have been redoing our side of the house (my mom lives on the other side in a gorgeous new home.) However, our budget died in January when my husband lost his job and we went for months trying to squeeze by on our savings until he got a job again. We we are almost in job land, (the postal service isn't the fastest at finalizing jobs). But our house still needs the changes and so we have had to rethink what we wanted to do. IE... the floors we have gone from considering hardwood to tile, to carpet to just painting the concrete and living the simple life. :o)
I grew up with the simple life and I am happy to have that in my blood and we are going back to it with our children. Life isn't all about getting gain and living in a magazine styled home. If you think about it your best memories aren't about money or possessions or furnishings, they are about family, love, and time spent enjoying simple things.
So I looked at my sewing room and thought about what I could do for less than $100 to improve the place. The flooring had to go. I had shag carpet put in there and the room used to be my children's bedroom. Well with 12 years of kids crawling, puking, dribbling food and who knows what else on it it was a little skanked out! Also the surface of the carpet had become like Velcro with all the years of washing and vacuuming. That does not make the best flooring for a sewing room. All the treads and scraps stuck to the carpet, NASTY! It was a vacuuming nightmare.
Paint 003
See what I mean?!? SKANKED!
So we decided to rip out the carpet and paint the concrete underneath. I had a painted floor in my room growing up and actually loved my simple country room.
So here is what we did.


Monday we emptied the room.
Paint 004

Paint 005

This is when we made a lovely discovery. Due to a very weathered backdoor we had water damage in the interior wall and now have Black mold damage in that room. We had to get that all cleaned up and sealed. Lucky for us it was a very tiny bit of damage.

Paint 006

Tuesday - Saturday I spent painting. The colors I picked were aqua, warm white and red. So with about $65 worth of paint, the room got a sweet makeover.

Paint 008
I am loving the closet. I want to put some of my selves in there (I know "Happy thought, selves in the closet". If you don't get that reference then you need to watch more Jane Austen.)

I was worried about the floor color. It is very bold but I love it. Red is my favorite color after all.
Paint 011

Interesting discovery, due to the placement of the closet, this room has marvelous acoustics and is really fun to sing in. My husband even noticed it. I used to sing all the time and haven't for a long time. He caught me singing in there as I painted and commented that it reminded him of when he met me 17 years ago. I worked in the deli/bakery of the grocery store he worked at and at night when I was cleaning the place up I used to sing all the time to make the work go faster for myself. He kinda liked hearing my voice across the store. He wanted to know who the new girl was that had the laugh that would float across the store to the meat shop where he worked. (We just celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary this week so those memories are kinda on the surface right now.) I wasn't like the other girls he had met. I guess he liked that. hee hee
Paint 013
All I have left to do now is put in the baseboard trim which I need to learn how to cut and my Friend Jill's husband is helping me trim out the window with a wide sill. I can't wait. It will be lovely and white.
It is amazing how exciting a new coat of paint make the simplest things.
Tomorrow I get to start the arduous task of sorting through the stuff that was in there and putting back what I want to keep.
I am teaching my oldest children how to weave some rugs and will let them use up the fabric I don't want to see come back into the room.

Oh I do need to put curtains up. Any Ideas?? I want something very vintage. It needs to keep the light out of my eyes. That room gets a lot of morning sun and I can only sew early in the morning before the kids get up or late at night after they go to bed.
I want the light to fill the room but not hit me right in the eyes.
And the rule is CHEAP FIX. I want something that isn't going to be really expensive. I don't ask for much do I? :o)

11 comments:

Alisa said...

Lucy,

These curtains seem like they'd be perfect in that room. Any red and white fabric would work well at the bottom and you could embroider with both red and aqua to tie the two colors together more. Plus you could put your girls to work on the embroidery.

http://kirstencan.typepad.com/kirstencan/2008/03/it-only-took-fi.html

mama k said...

what a transformation! Can't wait to see it filled up with your pretty fabric again. :)

Princess of Everything (and then some) said...

I LOVE it! I have bamboo shades in my craft room and they rock. They are inexpensive. Got mine at Home Depot.

Rebekah said...

I love the new colors you picked for the room! It looks so different. Can't wait to see how it looks when all your fun stuff has been moved back in and set up for more projects.

Yarni Gras! said...

doesn't paint make everything better! I can't wait to see the finished room :-)

All the places you love said...

I've seen big white cotton woven dish towels used as curtains. The curtains would be easy to make. I would say 2 or 3 dish towels scrunched up on a rod. And where you have all those wonderful flea markets and thrift stores out there I'm sure the possibilities are limitless.

Lucy said...

Fabulous ideas. I have the dishtowels already (somewhere in the rubble I removed). I will have to dig them out and set my girls to embroidering on them. That would be darling! I will have to dig up some of their old drawings and transfer them. It would be great to let each kid embroider a curtain. :o)
I got the window trimmed today and and half the baseboard put on the walls. The other half will go when we unearth the door.

MyCretanlife said...

You have been busy.A coat of fresh paint makes a huge difference. Looking forward to seeing the finished room.

All the places you love said...

I looked at the curtains that Alisa's link. I think that would be great. The curtains I remember were vintage dish towels. But if you are going to use new (or what ever you have buried) the trim at the bottom would also be nice. Although I don't know what color you would use. You have so many going on.

Lucy said...

RED! I think it would have to be red. I have a red with large white polka dots right now that just might get used. I have unearthed one dishtowel and just need to find 4 or 5 more. My problem is finding something srtong enough to span an 80" window without being just a huge thing in the middle of the window. I might have to use a shower rod. There is no way to add a support in the middle.

Anonymous said...

How about using a sheet and sew it however you want to cover the areas you want. The dollar stores have cheap new sheets, and decent prints too.

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