I've been sewing in there for a little over a month now, not very easily though since most of my stuff was jammed into the guest room and hard to find. But as of the first weekend in February I have a TV(!), an ironing station (!!), an actual desk (!!!) and more storage (!!!!) in the room now. It's been nice because while I sew John has been painting or installing drawer boxes so we were together in the sense that we were in the same room. I had that above mentioned TV on and I just can't be interrupted while watching my shows!
95% of the furniture in the room John built, one of the perks of being married to a carpenter. I would think of something I wanted, but my searching only turned up expensive things and then I'd pout because I thought I couldn't have it. Then John would say he could just build it because he's awesome and the world's greatest husband (John made me write that).
To start off the list I told him that I wanted a pocket door with a mirror built in so I wouldn't have to take up valuable wall real estate and this is what he came up with. It is so unbelievably beautiful and could be my favorite feature in the room. The only thing we had to buy was the pocket door kit and the mirror, around $130 total I think. A little side note, one place wanted over $200 for the mirror! That's just outrageous! If you're in the market for mirror or glass let me know so you don't get ripped off.
Anywho, I think that's a pretty good cost since I couldn't even find a seller for the door and ours would have been a custom size anyway. For even cheaper you could build the pocket door kit, but since John had never tackled that before we decided to buy one.
Directly across from the pocket door is the drawer cabinet. The cabinet and drawer fronts are the ones that John brought home forever ago. We had to buy 3 of the drawer slides and the pulls, but the drawer boxes and counter top were just scraps from John work. The top is solid bamboo that John glazed white, there was more to the finish that involved sanding and distressing with a wire brush, but I don't know the details. Again he's just amazing! I absolutely love how it turned out.
So we paid about $40 for this cabinet. I'm using these drawers to replace the old, plastic drawer storage. Those are NOT welcome back into the room!
This is the cabinet without the top or drawer fronts, I was just so excited for it to actually be close to being finished!
And here's the finished cabinet! I'll be setting my table top ironing board on it when sewing, but it's too beautiful to coverup all the time.
Next is the pièce de résistance, the very custom desk John built for me. The room is small so I didn't want a big desk taking up tons of space, but sewing quilts requires a lot of surface to work on. The top is that white glazed bamboo and the legs are white. In it's normal state it's almost 2 feet wide by 4 feet long with a built in shelf along the side. The very custom part is that the desk morphs like a transformer into a bigger, better desk. It doubles in width and extends to 6 feet long, perfect for quilting and finishing large quilts. The desk was completely free since everything was scraps and John got the hinges from a co-worker.
That lamp is also new and not what I was thinking about getting, but it called to me at Target one day. It's LED so it doesn't get hot which is perfect since I spend a lot of time sewing.
There is one more thing on John's "to build" list, a cutting table, but I think he's getting burned out so I'm not going to beg him.
I also have found the perfect sewing chair, but it's over $200 and I'd feel bad if I added it to John's list so I'm going to try to antique it when I have the time and money.
So really now, I think the next post about the room will be when it's all done!