The Mom Cave

This was such a fun project! Enjoy the Before and After at the end!

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The Mom Cave

So our upstairs office has served as storage of random weird junk since we moved here in December.  My gorgeous husband agreed to let me turn it into a Mom Cave/Craft room.  He values my sanity.  Crazy people don't put out.
Here is what I was working with:

This is after I cleaned on it for a couple of days. Yeah, we're slobs.

First things, first.  Down comes the green basket weave wallpaper.

Yup, much better.

I didn't want to tackle a drywall project, so the paneling was going to have to stay.  I love the 1970's as much as anyone, but this is just terrible and was sucking the minuscule light right out of the room.  I had some leftover green (Sherwin Williams Parakeet Green) from the playroom, so that went on the walls.

Getting better, huh?

So now I have to put my super glossy topcoat on the paneling and trim and built-ins. 

Question:  Should I paint the dormer walls green?  Or go with an accent color, like yellow? Or pink? Or ___? 

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I went with pink.  My super-duper summer intern, Callie, helped me decide.  Here's how it turned out:

I (finally!) finished painting out the trim and paneling out white.  It took 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of topcoat, but I feel like it was worth it.  Altogether I spent about 15 hours over the course of 2 weeks painting.  Still not done...  

BUT, I did find some great fabric at Hobby Lobby.  I used it on my chair, and anticipate some pillows in my future:

Before:          After:

Yes. Ethan's room really IS this dirty.

My beautiful Fabric:

The green plaid is the fabric of my craigslist find armchair. 

Because I love it so much, here's a close up:

I need to finish sanding and painting shelves, and then it's the fun part: hanging artwork, organizing supplies, and taking more pictures!  

Owl do it!  Really!

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Painting is FINISHED.  Well. Sort of.  I still have to make (and of course paint) my desk.  But I made a lot of progress in the last few evenings.  Have a look:

Built-ins stocked up!

See my green chair?  Isn't it cutey-pa-tootey?  Alas, I still need to figure out window treatments.

Organizing!  

All my canvases/canvasi/canvaseses  (or whatever the plural for canvas is.  I vote for canvasi.)

Glass jars found at Hobby Lobby half off for $3/each.  The ribbon rods are $2 tension rods from Wal-Mart.  I still have LOTS of ribbon to load up on those babies!

Perhaps my favoritest (wish that was a real word) part is my paint shelves.  I have a ton of paint and typically keep them in big plastic bin.  I saw a version of this on Pinterest, and had to do it!

So because of the way the wall was built, the stud was right in the center.  Darn.  So I just set a screw dead center of the shelves.  (Shelves are made of 1x2's cut to 24" and painted out white)

See?

At this point they became the amazing spinning shelves.  Crap.  Time to improvise:

That, friends, is a nail.  Worked like a charm.  

Wicked mess to clean up...

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Step One: Get cute guy at Lowe's to cut down a piece of fiberboard ($18.60 a sheet) to size.  Smile a lot and he won't charge you for the cuts (but if he does, it's less than $1 per cut).  Yes, I have a picture.  Yes, I will post it later (it's on my Crackberry).

Step Two: figure out how to get this:

up these:

Step Three:  Wish your independent spirit would take a break for a day and call someone to help.

Step Four:  Plop that puppy on top of your already-mounted "L" brackets.

The heavy duty metal ones.  That hurt when you drop them on your toes.

Step Five:  Don't do this when you plop.

Step Six: Paint. Again.  And then do it again. 

Step Seven: Cut out a hole for your glue gun cord. I used my drill with the largest bit.  I just drilled in a circle and tapped out the middle.

Step Eight:  Wait for Primer to dry (an excellent time for a blog post)

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So while I was waiting on paint to dry, I hung my new $11 light fixture.  I CAN SEE! And it didn't take Jesus spit!

My work surface is HUGE, which I totally love.  But there was some serious real estate underneath.  I knew I needed to utilize it for storage, so I came up with this.  Ethan helped.  I think he was pretty desperate to get out of Wal-Mart.

$1 Cup Hanging Hooks

$.57 dowel rod (x2)

The cheap curtains  ($6.50 for a package of 2)

Into the side of the worktop.

Curtain goes on the rod.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

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Finally finished up the last of it.  Well.  Almost.  Technically I can't shellac my desktop for 3-4 more days. But I'll get to it.  Or I won't.  Either way.

So, drumroll please.  (Did anyone else flash to this? Just me? Ok.)

So I still have several decision to make and smaller projects to finish.  I have 3 blank walls that are crying out for something.  And I still have to dress the window and make some pillows.  But I think I can pretty much call this one DONE!

Next?