One of the feelings that’s coming with this need for quiet comfort is also an urge to purge. Since moving into the house, my craft room/studio has become a catch-all space, the corners of which are full of random papers and things that we want to keep on the main level of the house but don’t know what to do with. The room itself if crammed with more furniture than it really needs, including two skinny bookcases, a desk, a drawer unit, a vintage kitchen table with three chairs, a vintage sewing machine, and another lower shelving unit that contains a bunch of random things that I’ve yet to find places for. I haven’t finished painting the room (SIGH), haven’t replaced the lighting fixture, haven’t replaced the ugly, stained, and worn pink carpeting, and haven’t hung any art on the walls. Unacceptable! How have I lived with it this long? I have no idea, but it’s got to change quickly so that I can start enjoying and using the space and stop cringing at it as I walk by in the hallway. I’ve turned to flickr for inspiration:

Things to happen before autumn:

• Triage books in collection (as a former English major, I’ve compulsively collected “classic” or “important” books without reading most of them, so it’s time to cull the herd down to what I actually love/enjoy)
• Triage furniture
• Remove all furniture from the room to finish painting around window, ceiling, and walls bordering ceiling
• Formulate a more constructive and comfortable floor plan for room, move furniture back in
• Hang art
• Come up with shelving/organizational system for closet
• Hang fabric curtain to block closet doorway
• Hang curtains in window (cafe curtains, perhaps? soemthing fun, at least)
• Get a rug to cover ugly carpeting until we replace with hardwood floors

This is a better representation of the wall color

And this is a better representation of the current trim color, not yet painted

Ashley from The Vertical House used this color in her bedroom, and I fell in love with it (Valspar’s “Grand Hotel Mackinac Blue”, found at Lowe’s). She also suggested Behr’s “Swiss Coffee” for the trim, but to get Behr paint I’d have to drive all the way to Cedar Rapids to Home Depot. Instead, I found a comparable color in Valspar’s paint lines, “Sawyer White”. Here they are together:

The white looks a little dirty here, but in example images, it looked lovely, nice and warm and not too stark. Rah! And then there are always window treatments to think of. I’m thinking single-panel curtains, either with tab tops and wall hooks to sweep them aside, or else pocket panel curtains with ribbon tied to keep them in check, like the ones in Nicole’s kitchen over at Making It Lovely.

Here are some possibilities from Reprodepot and Sew Mama Sew for curtain fabrics.

What do you think?

The living room

The other side of the living room

Doorbell and phone nook

Bathroom

The bathtub we both want to save

What will eventually be my craft room

Piles of stuff in Kevin's old bedroom in the basement

Shelves filled with who-knows-what

More piles of crap. You should have seen it before.

Check out the creeping black mold in the corner!

More updates to come!