I am so excited about one of my summer projects:
fixing up my sewing nook. 

Right off of our kitchen is a large closet that was originally supposed to hold our washer and dryer.  But when we bought the house, Funnel and I decided that the noise and mess of a tiny laundry room spilling into the kitchen wasn’t such a great idea.  We thought the unfinished part of our basement would make a better and roomier laundry area, so we moved the washer and dryer downstairs, and the closet became my sewing nook (and will also be a little office area after the make-over!)

All we really did with it last summer was to paint it a pale yellow, remove the large doors and hung up makeshift curtains (made out of sheets from the thrift store).   It’s pretty disorganized and “blah”. 

Although the photo was taken last summer, this is more or less how the craft nook looks right now.  Behind the left hand curtain is a tall, industrial-type of cabinet that houses fabric, and my camera equiptment:

What I am planning to do is:

* Make new curtains .  I would like to do some simple, white, somewhat sheer, breezy curtains, that would go along with the white beadboard wainscoting that we have in the first floor of our house.

* Wallpaper the nook with maps.  I got this idea from the Anthropologie store several years ago and have kept it in the back of my mind.  In Rome, we bought a really cool, vintage Italy map, and just today I ordered 7 more maps through Amazon.  Here’s one of them:

I think the maps will give the nook a vintage feel and also incororate our love for traveling.

* Put up wall-to-wall wooden shelving.  The white wire shelving that is in there now looks very “laundry room” .. I am hoping to make or find shelving that is thick, white, wooden and clean-looking.   

* Buy a wall-to-wall desk/tabletop.   Right now I have a small antique sewing desk for my sewing machine, and while it is a really neat piece, it is small, and we would like to have a large, wall-to-wall desk that could also be used for our computer.

* Get some fun bins and baskets to use on the shelves for storage.  Since we were eliminating our current storage (a big storage cabinet and my sewing desk) the shelves will have to hold all our office supplies, my photography equiptment and all my yarn and fabric.  I want to get some really pretty bins and baskets to put them in.

+   +   +

And here is my inspiration for the sewing nook…

This is basically what I would like the end result to be (but imagine maps instead of the tree wallpaper):

Here are a couple examples of maps used as wallpaper:

{via lovelydesign, apartmentherapy, &  yankee magazine }

I am so excited… I think it’s much easier to be creative when you have a pretty space to do it in. 

I have a free weekend near the end of June that I am hoping I can use to make some headway!  I will keep you updated on my progress.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 at 10:10 am and is filed under art + design, home sweet home, traveling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.