Craft Room and Office Make Over
Hello friends,
When we first moved into our home when we came back into Dunedin in 2019, we chose a house that would fit both hubby and my work spaces, since we have the privilege to work from home. I chose my craft room space in what was a big bedroom that had a mezzanine attached. The decor in the room was typical for the 1990s, with lots of beige and brown, and also with a feature wall. I was just happy to have a dedicated crafting space at the time, and I knew I could decorate later it to my tastes.
The plan was to use the mezzanine space as storage for all my craft supplies, but as soon as we moved in our cat Missy (black cat) chose the mezzanine as her own personal sleeping space. And then when Rosie (tuxedo cat) joined us as a kitten later on, she also fell in love with the mezzanine, now all decked out with soft toys and cat beds.
This set up has worked for a number of years, there's space for sewing, spinning, and weaving, and chilling out and crafting at night while hubby plays on his Playstation in the lounge. The kitties have also enjoyed the space they've also claimed as their own.
I had my office down stairs in a room shared with hubby's home office, and it was dark and dreary, with no sunshine at all during the day, and south west facing. The other problem is that it was so far away from my craft room that my workflow was very disjointed. I had started thinking about moving my office upstairs into the craft room at the end of 2023, and then over the summer holidays, hubby came to me pondering the idea of having his own space for building and storing his Lego.
The problem with Missy and Rosie cat is that they love eating things, and especially Lego, so the Lego space couldn't be somewhere that the cats could get to, which meant it would have to be in hubby's work office. But hubby's work office already had his piano in there, which meant we would have to move it elsewhere. We soon came up with a plan to move the piano into the office I was in, and then I would move my office into the craft room, which I was very happy with.
The other problem was that my craft room had a big couch in there, as well as a large loom I used for work, which meant that my desk wouldn't fit in the space. So after some brain storming, we came up with solution. The first task was to sell the couch, which was relatively easy to do within a couple of days on Trade Me. And then we also put my big loom up on Trade Me as well to sell. I'd wanted to downgrade my loom to a smaller sized Ashford 8 shaft jack floor loom for a while, and this was a perfect opportunity to do so.
With the couch gone, and the loom being readied for selling, there was finally space to move my office desk up to the craft room. But, that's when I come up with another idea—since there was room in the craft room to move around, it was a perfect time to paint it. I couldn't stand the brown walls anymore, and within a couple of hours of suggesting it to hubby, we'd already bought the paint, Quarter Alabaster from Resene (I chose this colour as I often need neutral backgrounds for product photos for my business), and started prepping the room for painting. Missy cat loves climbing ladders so she was very helpful during this stage.
Because we had to keep pushing stuff around the room to make space, we ended up painting one wall at a time over a couple of weekends, but we finally got it done.
With all the painting done, we moved everything back into position. But we had another hurdle to overcome, we had taken down the blinds during the painting, and now needed to replace them with thermal curtains. After a quick trip to Spotlight, I returned home with the most girly of curtain fabrics, and with my mum's help, we made the two sets of curtains needed for the craft room. The big south facing triangle window was a challenge, but luckily we'd done it before in our bedroom at the other end of the house, and still had the template to cut the curtain to the correct angle.
Within minutes of getting the finished curtains up on the windows, hubby and I excitedly began moving my office. It didn't take long at all to move my desk and all my other stuff up the stairs. And while I was pottering around and putting my desk stuff back into it's rightful place, hubby was already moving his piano into his home office space...
The room is looking better by the day as I potter around making it the space I've always dreamed of, and since then I've sold my big loom. I then ordered my new loom from Ashford, and it arrived within only a couple of days, and is now assembled ready for weaving. The display cabinet I blogged about last week, is in it's final position, and now has a cat bed on top. Rosie and Missy are now arguing who gets to sit in it each day.
I also ordered an occasional chair to replace the big couch I used to do crafting on, but it isn't due to arrive for another month. Once that is here, my craft room makeover is complete. It was a longer process than it initially started out as being, but I'm really happy now with this space. It makes me happy to go to work and to craft, and it is a really relaxing place, with great views, and plenty of natural light.
And if you're wondering how hubby's Lego project is going, well it turns out that he didn't check the size of the piano vs the chicane the piano would have to go around in order to get into his home office, and the piano didn't fit, no matter what we tried. We ended up moving the piano into the lounge, and then rearranging the couches after that, and then moving our treadmill into his home office to make enough space. But what is done is done, and he's now happily unboxing all his Lego in half of his work office, and organizing it to his heart's content.
The one thing that we did take away from all this, is that our 1980s home looks better when it's been repainted to a more neutral light colour. Most of our home is currently in shades of brown and maroon, with many feature walls, and it feels dark and gloomy inside. We are already planning on painting more rooms this year, but are currently taking a break until autumn. During this renovation my garden has been neglected alot, and needs lots of love between now and the colder months.
Have a wonderful day.
Julie-Ann
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My New Secondhand Display Cabinet
Hello friends,
Recently we've been giving my craft room a makeover, and also moving my office into the craft room as well (blog post to come soon), and as part of that process I needed to find a cabinet for storing things, as well as displaying the Botanical Garden Lego kit I got for Christmas. Our cats Rosie and Missy are very fond of biting Lego, so the only way I could display it was behind the safety of glass.
After trying, and failing to find a secondhand cabinet on Facebook Marketplace, I tried looking on Trade Me, and soon came across a vintage display cabinet, with a wonderful stained glass door up for sale locally. With hubby and I both being happy with the cabinet, and the buy now price, and we bought it, and then impatiently waited for a chance to pick it up. Luckily, it fit inside our Nissan Leaf, and we picked it up and very carefully took it home with us.
The cabinet is in pretty good condition, apart from a small crack in one of the glass panels, and also the loss of some varnish on top of the cabinet. That didn't bother us much, as the plan was to purchase a super cozy cat bed on top for Missy and Rosie to nap on in the sun. The cat bed is now on order, and will hopefully arrive soon.
After giving the cabinet a thorough cleaning, it still smelled a bit musty, so I put a bowl of baking soda and dried lavender inside, and then left it in place for a week.
When we removed the baking soda and lavender, the cabinet now had a pleasant lavender smell, and was ready to store stuff inside. The top shelf is for storing my Lego Ahsoka from Star Wars, and also my Lego Botanical Garden, and the middle and bottom shelves are for storing paper work for my small business Hearth & Oak, and also my weaving and dyeing study notes.
I'm really happy with how this cabinet has turned out, and Rosie cat approves too, and hopefully even more once her cat bed arrives.
More and more I'm trying where possible to source anything we need for the house secondhand, there are such lovely vintage furniture pieces out there.
Have a wonderful day.
Julie-Ann
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Transplanting my Blueberry Plants
Hello friends,
When we moved from Wellington back to Dunedin in October 2019, our new home came with a large outdoor aviary. At first I really wasn't sure what to do with it, but after a couple of weeks I came up with a perfect idea—if birds couldn't get out of the bird cage, then that meant that birds also couldn't get in. It would make a great berry cage to protect all the precious strawberries, raspberries and blueberries I wanted to grow in the garden.
Over the next couple of months I removed all the nesting boxes and bird related stuff, and began turning it into a berry cage by making sure that light and rain could get in. When all that was completed, I then planted a raspberry bush, multiple strawberry plants, and three varieties of blueberries. All these plants have grown very well in the last three years thanks to the previous inhabitants droppings, and it has now come to the point that the blueberries have outgrown the small space that I gave them in the berry cage to live.
So this meant that I had to find somewhere else to grow them in the garden. There is a section of the garden down near the clothes line that already had a gooseberry bush, a giant blackcurrant bush, rhubarb, and a dwarf apricot tree I planted last year. I had began clearing up all the overgrown weeds in that section of the garden last autumn, but after my sinus operation that all came to a halt.
By the time I got back around to tidying that section of the garden this month, the weeds had all returned in a vengeance. Hubby has helped me tackle this area over the last couple of weeks, and last weekend he dug four holes for me, three for the blueberry bushes, and one for the tea plant I had ordered online, but hadn't arrived yet.
As you can see from the above photo, Luna, our neighbour's cat came and helped me with the transplanting. She is a very good girl, who I will miss very much, as her owners have just sold their house, and Luna will soon be living elsewhere. I think she mainly helped because I have catnip growing in the berry cage, and she wanted to partake in its benefits...
It didn't take long to transplant the blueberries, and they have bounced back quite quick, which is great. I have also transplanted some natural dye plants I had growing in the vege garden, into this garden space as well. I am growing St Johns Wort, Woad, Madder, Tormentil, and Lemon Sorrel to hopefully dye with later on in the growing season.
I know that I will now have to net my blueberries from the birds, but I will deal with that closer to the time. I hope that very soon my blueberry bushes will provide me with lots of delicious blueberries to eat and put in smoothies over the coming summer.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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