Craft Room Renovation

So, this past week, the kids and I loaded up to head to Melbo & GG's house. A month or so before, Molly and I decided that we wanted to help them re-arrange and re-organize rooms so that GG could have her craft room downstairs and the guest bedroom upstairs. Their house is built so that two of the bedrooms are on one end of the house. One of those is GG's bedroom and one is the guest room that is really only used now when Vic and the kids and I come into town. Then upstairs is one giant room that has always been the sewing room or craft storage room, etc. It also leads to the attic. So many clothes have been sewn upstairs and Molly and I have had so many 4H projects, goat showing outfits, goat show banners, prom dresses, etc. sewn for us or by us upstairs with Melbo and GG. We have lots of memories of using the seam ripper too many times, as well as watching countless chick flick movies while doing our projects. It is a great room! But, these days, Melbo and GG tend to do their sewing or scrapbooking or crocheting or anything else downstairs and the upstairs tends to be a catch-all as well as general storage area. So, it was decided that the guest bedroom downstairs be used instead as the craft room. This could house ALL of GG's scrapbooking stuff as well as both of their sewing machines. I was really excited to do this project because 1) I love a good clean-out and re-organization project and 2) It was going to be such a better place for GG to scrapbook and sew. Her room can finally be used as just a bedroom and not so crowded with all of her projects.

Anyways, the kids and I left Vic for a week to come to Aubrey on a Thursday. Molly and I spent the majority of the first two days just hauling things downstairs for Melbo and GG to go through to toss or keep, as well as moving piles around upstairs. By Saturday, we were ready for Charley to help us exchange furniture from upstairs to downstairs and vice versa. Then, by Sunday afternoon, we had all of the crazy clutter we had hauled downstairs either loaded up to take away or put back in it's place. This was very important, as Pa was being driven nuts by seeing all of that stuff everywhere. He can't stand clutter. We took a break Sunday afternoon. This is also when I went to Ana and Charley's house for a "Bachelor Wedding" party with Ana and a couple of her friends. Sean and Catherine, from The Bachelor, were getting married on TV! I couldn't miss it! Then, Monday we did some more cleaning and organizing after I took Grace to the doctor. She had fever for three days, so I assumed ear infection, but apparently it was just the crud. Fortunately, she was fine. Then, Tuesday, we all (with the kids) made a trip to Frisco to The Container Store (one of my most favorite places!) to finish purchasing some organizing items for GG's scrapbooking room. By Tuesday night, we were all sore, exhausted, but so happy with the end results. The upstairs is now a cozy guest bedroom with two beds to house my entire little family of 4 when we travel. And the attic is cleaned up and organized, except for the 1000 baskets that have accumulated that we still need go through a toss/keep process on. The downstairs bedroom is now a fabulous scrapbooking room that GG is still working on getting setup so she can craft away!

Not only was it such a productive week, but it was so fun to do with Molly! Molly and I can be a really good team when we set our minds to a project. I had such a great time!

I don't have any before pictures, although I don't think Molly and I will ever forget how it looked before. But, here are a couple of after panoramic pictures. The first is of the craft room. At this point, GG doesn't have any of her things on the wall for scrapbooking or her new TV, but you can get the idea. And the second one is also a panoramic of the upstairs room. Lots of storage for Melbo's painting and canvases, fabric, and notions, plus a dresser, queen and twin bed, plus a childrens corner and all of GG's books from Kindergarten. I think there have to be at least 300 books there!