Creating an Ikea Craft room

Well, the new addition to the family is coming soon. Unfortunately, our two bedroom house is full of stuff right now...including our second bedroom, which is eventually (ed: eventually has arrived!) going to be the nursery. At the beginning of this project, it was half full of my wife's sewing and craft stuff, which needed to be moved. (the other half has my hobby stuff, which will be dealt with later) We didn't have any easy places to move it to, however--it is a small house. We had three options:

1. Get rid of the craft stuff (unacceptable)

2. Box up the craft stuff and put it in storage (undesirable)

3. Be creative!

Since we have a carport, we never ever (ever ever ever) use our front door. In fact, our front hall looked like this:




We saw some potential to repurpose this space, so we cleared it out:





We took some measurements and headed to Ikea. First order of business, hide the front door:







We found a cool desk with a pull-out L-extention that exactly fits the space:











A railed storage system will be a good use of space for items that need to be frequently accessed:





There was 8" left over, so we bought an 8" wide shelf that was supposed to be for CD's...I was so happy our measurements were accurate!







Sewing stuff starts to get transfered...







We decide it needs more light, and a power strip. A trip to Wal-Mart for parts (we repurposed the lights from the old craft room)







And, tada! A fully functional craft room in a space once devoted completely to a litter box and some junk.











Hopefully this inspires someone to make the most of the space they have! It was definitely a very satistfying weekend project, and my wife is ecstatic...she says it's the best craft space she's ever had. That's good enough for me to call it a success!

(ed: originally posted 5-8-2008)