Giant Sewing Studio Pegboard

I can't believe it has been a year since we put our house on the market and went searching for a new house!  At this point in time last year I was nervous about finding a house since our house sold in 24 hours and we had a time limit of about 3 weeks to find a new one.  We saw several houses in the beginning that could of worked but we would of had to compromise on some of the things on our wish list.  This time around I didn't want to compromise too much because I knew that I wanted this house to be our forever home.  I'm glad we stuck it out even though our offer on this house got accepted with less than 24 hours to spare!  One thing that I really wanted in our new house was a dedicated space to sew and craft and this house has the perfect space!  Here are some before pictures of the space.

This little room is right next to our family room in the basement which is perfect because I plan on the family room being a play space for the girls.  Another great thing about this room is the storage!  Those built in cabinets are perfect for storing away many of my craft supplies.  In the last picture you can see the other side of one of the ugliest accent walls I've ever seen!  Here's what it looks like from the other side.

When I saw the listing for this place I laughed out loud when I saw the picture of this wall.  But despite this ugly wall I knew that the rest of the house is perfect.  Someday we will get rid of that wall but for now it is a good conversation point when people take a tour of our house!

I'll talk more about the rest of the things in this room in a future post but today I want to focus on the pegboard wall.  After painting the room, we got to work putting up the pegboard.  I purchased these pegboards from Home Depot.  It would of been cheaper to buy one continuous piece of pegboard but these are nice quality and I thought it might be easier to hang four smaller pieces than one giant one.  I also purchased 3 pieces of 8 ft long one by twos, wood screws, and 3 pieces of 8 ft long flat crown moulding for the frame.

I didn't take any pictures of the hanging process but it was pretty simple.  We found the studs and screwed the one by twos to the studs (one at the top and bottom of where we wanted the pegboard and one close to the middle).  Then we screwed the pegboard panels to the one by twos.  Finally I cut the ends of the crown moulding pieces at a 45 degree angle with a miter box and saw.  I had to cut one of the pieces in half for the sides of the frame.  We used a pneumatic nail gun to attached the frame around the edge of the pegboard.

I was originally going to leave the pegboard white but I loved this wall color so much that I didn't want to lose so much of it behind the pegboard so I painted the pegboard to match the wall and then painted the frame white.

The hardest part of this is figuring out how to fill it up with stuff now that it is on the wall.  I bought an assortment of pegboard hooks and accessories to hang my tools and shelves and such.

I found this little letter board at Hobby Lobby.  It came with white letters but I also bought some smaller blush pink letters from Amazon.

I found this pink wire shelf/bin at Target.  I couldn't find it online to link it but it is from the Pillowfort collection.

It is so nice to be able to easily reach for my tools while sitting at my desk but also not having them on the desk and cluttering up my workspace.

A lot of my storage solutions for this pegboard came from either Target of Ikea.  These Ikea Skurar votive candle holders are perfect for holding various tools and they are so pretty.  By the way, I can never remember the weird Scandinavian names for Ikea stuff.  It took me so long to find the link to these because I couldn't remember what they were called.  I also have a few sizes of the plant pots from the same collection.  I'm using the smaller size Skurar pots on the pegboard and I have some larger sized ones hanging on the pegboard.  I have 4 of these Bekvam spice racks on the pegboard and I intend to buy more.  

Most of them will be used for ribbon and trim storage.  This is the BEST solution that I have found for ribbon and spooled trim storage!  In our old house I had my ribbon spools on a tension rod in the closet.  It was a pain to remove the spool though when it ran out because I had to take a bunch of them off in order to get the empty one off.  This works so much better because I can still pull it out to cut pieces but it is a breeze to remove them when they are empty.  I actually bought these spice racks to turn into little bookshelves in my daughters' rooms.  I'm glad I never got around to putting them up because this is one of my favorite storage solutions on this pegboard!

I found this little wooden crate in the aisle with unfinished wood projects at Hobby Lobby.  Those two boxes are a Kate Spade watch box and a Michael Kors watch box.  In the Kate Spade one I store my pattern weights (side note: I have searched all over for the Kate Spade watch that came in this box and I hope to find it soon or I will be very sad.  It is a black watch with pave cat ears around the watch face and I love it so much!).  I have needles and my other sewing machine feet in the Michael Kors box.  I found that little odds and ends container in the Target dollar section and I love that it is blush pink and has that light wood lid.

These floral buckets were also from the Target dollar section.  When I first found them there were only 2 of the floral ones left.  After putting them up on the pegboard I loved them so much that I knew that I needed more.  I checked that dollar section every single time that I went to Target for a month straight and was finally rewarded by finding 3 more.  A few are empty right now but the others are holding pom pom trim, elastic, and some other trim that I bought by the yard recently.

I took this little fabric and lace garland off of my daughter's teepee:

Photo credit Exposures by J. Linnea

I printed my Etsy shop logo on some printable heat transfer material and ironed it onto some linen fabric and then added some lace trim.  I'm so excited about this pegboard and my sewing studio.  It has been so much fun to sew in this room!  

I've also been busy working on the family room that is right next to this space.  Over my Easter break it got a new coat of paint and now I am working on a few fun decor projects including a way to display/store children's art, a fresh look for the benches that were on the porch at our old house, and a really cool decor project involving wool felt pom poms and paper mache letters.  I am also slowly working on some sewing projects related to cloth diapering so I hope to have an update on cloth diapering with those projects soon.  Also here is what I have been working on lately:

You can read more about the pattern and tutorial that I used for these bibs in this post.  And here's my now 7 month old cutie rocking the bib on the left:

Ikea Hack Media Console Part II

Well I said my next post would be about some art for my living room but I haven't gotten around to hanging it on the wall yet because it is a large piece of art and my husband and I have been under the weather.  So instead I am back with Part II of my media console project.  Part I involved creating a top with a herringbone pattern out of paint stir sticks.

The next step in the process was to add a back to the shelving unit.  The shelving unit is open but since it was going to be up against a wall I really wanted a back to hide cords and such.  I purchased 4 pieces of foam core board and taped them together with white duct tape. 

I then cut out holes for the cords of our PS3, Wii, modem, and router.  That large cut out at the bottom is for the cord of the serge protector.  If you look in the above picture you will see a door on one of the compartments.  That was how I decided to hide the serge protector but I wanted the back open so that it would be easy to plug everything in.

Next, I attached some paintable textured wallpaper to one side of the foam core with spray adhesive. The wallpaper is left over from this furniture makeover in our bedroom.

Next I painted the wallpaper with my favorite Martha Stewart Vintage Gold paint which I have used in numerous projects on this blog.  I spaced on taking a picture of this step because I was so eager to attach the back after the paint dried.  I attached the back with white duct tape.  I figured nobody would be seeing the back and this way if I ever decide to repurpose this piece, the back can be removed without ruining the unit.

Here is a look at the detail of the textured wallpaper behind our modem.

Sorry about the messy cords, I still have some sprucing up to do in that regard.  I have spent the last couple of days finding some storage containers for the console and I have a project in mind to make them a little more colorful.  But enough of that because I am sure you are eager to see the finished product.

I wish it weren't so dark on that side of the living room.  I need to get another floor lamp.  Okay, now for a cost break down:

Ikea Expedit Shelving Unit-$100

Ikea Kallax Door Insert-$15

100 Paint Stir Stick-$5

Liquid Nails-$3

Minwax Provincial Stain: $7

Other items used that I already had on hand: paintable textured wall paper, white duct tape, wood conditioner, wipe-on poly, paintbrushes, miter box and saw, Martha Stewart Vintage Gold paint

So the total cost for me was around $130

The storage boxes were a combination of TJ Maxx and Michaels purchases.  Well I think I need to take a nap now.  This cold is really bringing my energy level down.  I'll leave you with one last picture though:)

Ikea Hack Media Console Part I

I am so excited to be back today with part one of an Ikea hack.  One of my most popular posts involved my Ikea hack of some Expedit shelving units that I made into a window seat for my porch. You can check that post out here.

We were in Minneapolis a few weekends ago and decided to stop at the Twin Cities area Ikea to pick up some door inserts for the window seat unit (more on that in a future post).  While we were there we decided it was also time to upgrade our media console and when we saw this Expedit unit we knew that it would be perfect.  

The best part about Ikea furniture is that it can be easily changed to make it unique thus the term Ikea hack.  When I was pinning ideas for my nightstands I fell in love with this image.

Source

I decided not to do this on my nightstands because at the time the idea of sawing wood intimidated me but I wanted to give it a try for this media console project.  The best part about this project is that the wood that is used is from paint stir sticks!

I started by taking a trip to my favorite hardware store, Scheels Home and Hardware.  Now you could take multiple trips to the store and try to score the paint sticks for free but I felt weird about that so I asked how much it would cost to purchase a large quantity of them. The guy at the paint desk was very friendly and he called someone right away to get my question answered. They charged me 5 cents a piece so I got 100 for $5.38 with tax.

Then I marked off 4 inch pieces on each of the sticks.

I then used the miter box and saw to cut them to size.  This step was a little tedious but I just blasted some tunes in the garage and it made it seem to go much faster.

Next I glued the sticks onto the Ikea shelving unit using Liquid Nails.  I laid them out in my pattern first and did some measuring to make sure I started the design in the center of the unit.  I also used a grease pencil to mark where I wanted those first pieces.

Later I laid down some pieces of painters tape to make sure that I kept the design straight and centered.

Then I started working on the end and side pieces which involved a lot of 45 degree cuts with the miter box and saw.  I actually marked each of the pieces individually with a pencil so that I would know exactly where to cut.  I also numbered the pieces so that I could cut them all at once in the garage and then know where to put them when I came back in.  

I ended up with a lot of gaps because I wasn't the most precise sawer so my next step was to take some wood putty to fill in the gaps.  I have had a lot of practice repairing holes in plaster walls so this was a piece of cake since applying the wood putty is the basically the same process.  

My last steps were to sand, apply wood conditioner, apply stain and then a couple of coats of wipe-on poly to seal it.  The stain that I used was Minwax Provincial.

I love the rustic look of it.  It looks awesome with my beachy blue walls.  Part two of the hack involves putting a backing on the shelving unit so check back next week for that post.  I will also include a cost break down for the entire project with that post.  I believe that I still have one more post for you this week on an art project to the living room so you don't even have to wait until next week to read more!