Craft Room Redo Journey

I am ambitious! I think you have to be to be an artist. I often have to scale back my expectations. To make matters worse, I want everything done at once! This journey of creating a craft room is taking longer then expected. So here it is my craft room redo journey.

I was sure I would be posting about my amazing craft room transformation by the end of this week, but I am still going through boxes and tossing/donating more stuff. It is truly daunting how much stuff accumulated in 31 years. So, I decided to update with some progress.

New CARPET!!!
Stayed under budget by finding a carpet installer on craigslist and using a remnant.

That doorway leads to a whole lot of storage space!
Art teacher bliss.

Embarrassing how much stuff piles up!
This is the contents of that room emptied out into the main basement.
This space used to be piled to the ceiling with stuff from my parents house.
I'm looking forward to cutting this pile in half as I donate and trash a lot more.

BEWARE: I am showing the ugly parts too. The piles of donations, keepers and trash. Why? So often we see beautiful before and afters that happen neatly in a half hour, but that's not the truth! Organizing your life takes weeks (sometimes months), lots of stamina, and an occasional pat on the back.

So here's my pat on the back to myself. I am going to celebrate what I've accomplished so far because this is something I'm doing for me! 

Craft Room Redo

Let me start at the beginning.

5 years ago bought a house THE HOUSE IS HUGE

4 years ago my parents divorced. With that came a lot of STUFF. Everyone needed a clean slate so all of my old stuff ended up in the basement. It was filled to the ceiling.

Taking out the old desks. . . they actually carpeted AROUND them!

3 years ago started to clean out. I was totally overwhelmed. It was like stepping into an episode of hoarders. So I called my Aunt and day by day she helped me sort and throw things out. 

TOMORROW! 

All of my hard work has paid off! I cleaned out the basement and a carpet guy is coming to take out the smelly 1963 carpet and install a new one so I can have a craft room. There is a little room attached which I've already organized to store my files for school and my extra supplies (art teachers have a lot of stuff!) But, it's all organized and ready to be used. 

Here is what it looks like all cleaned out! The big reveal will be Monday on my cute craft space (I even worked this summer painting some shabby chic storage.) 

When we pulled out the desk there were some interesting typed letters from the son of the former owner.
He was stationed and ready to be deployed.
He talks about how great our city was and how he would joke with his bunk mates about how NYC and Boston were trashy compared with our city! Whew if he could see what happened to this great place after the war. A lot of the manufacturing business left and it's in disrepair; to put it nicely, it's the ghetto.
I'm going to try to find someone related to the former homeowner to give these awesome letters to!