Today, I am going to set aside my anal retentive nature for a split second so I can share some craft room photos with you. Because despite my best efforts (involving a rubber mallet and a stream of profanities that’d make the cast of Charm School blush) I couldn’t get the aforementioned shelf put together. Verdict? It’s a lousy piece of crap, and if we can find the receipt it’s going straight back to Lowe’s.

I don’t know why I was hung up on the shelf, when we don’t have any door trim or basemolding up and the floor is a painted, gouged, hole-ridden mess. It’s not like the room is actually done in the true sense of the word. But, it is in my nature to freak out about things like stupid wire shelving units. And so I did.

Anyway, without further ado, I give you my new and improved Laundry and Craft Room. But first, a few “BEFORE” pics:

(View of the back of the room – now partially eaten up by the bathroom and closet)

(View of the front of the room, from doorway)

(View from the doorway)

Because the craft room used to be an upstairs kitchen (our house was a duplex for a while) it had cabinets, a sink, old paneling, and cheap lick-em-stick-em vinyl floor tiles that were peeling off all over the place. When we gutted the bathroom, we gutted half of this area too – and moved the walls and plumbing around. The craft room got smaller, the bathroom got bigger, and we added a closet. You can see a decent explanation of all that here.

My mission with this room was to get it in usable condition quickly; I need to start crafting before my blood pressure gets any higher. And usable, it is – even pretty, if you can overlook the floor and the lack of trim. Here’s an AFTER view from the back of the room (near the closet door):

The work table and cheapo office chair are a bit miniscule for the room, but I’m sure I’ll find better furniture when I hit the garage sales this summer. What I really love are my shelves,cups, & pegboard. So many of my supplies are out in the open now, making crafting and clean-up that much easier.

Here’s another shot of the shelves and pegboard. The pegboard is white plastic, and was $14 for a 2×4 sheet. We cut it down to about 2×3 so the cups would fit nicely underneath without encroaching on my work surface.

As you can see, I’m container-happy. Everything is either see-through or well-labeled so I know what’s inside without having to dig.

Here’s the other side of the room – a blurry one, I apologize. My hopeless little shelving unit was SUPPOSED to go in between the washer and dryer to hold our laundry goodies. So ignore that gap and the pile of detergent bottles, ok?

The shelf behind the washer and dryer hides all of our plumbing, but also comes in pretty handy. That uppper area draws a lot of attention for some reason, so maybe I’ll put some cool artwork there. For now, it’s just holding a bunch of supplies and doo-dads. Here’s a close-up:

This is the view from the back of the room, facing the doorway. I grabbed an unused dresser more storage, and it’s chock-full already.

So….. that’s it for now. The big reveal! I’m happy with how it has turned out. It has a new ceiling, a few new walls, a new light fixture, new paint and new curtain rods. Everything else in the room was scavenged from elsewhere in the house.

It wasn’t a big spender project, but it’s not over yet. We still have trim to add, and flooring to consider. We’re holding on both for now because it’s just not that important to us yet, and because the entire upstairs needs new flooring so we figure we’ll wait and do it all at once.

Until then, I just won’t look down ;)

As always, you can see the full photo set on Flickr: Fixer-Upper’s Craft Room Photo Set