Woo Hoo..My New Sewing Room

It's finally done!! My sewing room in the basement was flooded on October 20th. I didn't plan this post to be today, but it's November 20th and it's been one crazy month. My sister was the biggest help to us throughout the whole process and I thank her from the bottom of my heart. She really pushed to get this done, because she knew I was at my wits end...especially with the flood part.
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I've never told you, but my dad (who lives with us) has flooded our basement 4 other times before this. Two times he put a big soup pot in the sink to fill it up and walked away for hours and never checked it. Because the pot was covering the drain, the water just over flowed and rained in the basement. The 2 other times I won't even get into. I thought my sewing room was in a safe zone down there, but there is no safe zone from an 85 year old forgetful man. LOL!!
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I needed to move back upstairs some where and my only option was a room we have that connects my dad's kitchen to our family room. It 12' x 24' and we use it for all our family functions. When my family and my husband's family get together here for most holidays, there are over 40 of us, so this room is used a lot. It had 2 big long tables, bookshelves and a buffet for serving food.
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Well, we clear everything out, brought up old furniture from the basement, cleared all the books out of the bookshelves and my sister and my niece gave me 3 butcher block tables...and this is what we did.
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• we painted everything single piece of old furniture black to bring it all together
• my sister is a master at adding crown moulding to anything to make it more my style. She used left over crown moulding from her house projects.
• I gathered up all my recycling projects for storage boxes
• I scavenged the house for all my galvanized metal things so it all would match
• the only things we purchased was 3 sheets of bead board for the back of the bookshelves, pipe straps for all the handles of the boxes, foam letters for my name, cork board, and a gallon of black paint. My sister brought some other things from her house that she said she "had", but I know she lied and bought them for me out of sympathy! I just didn't want her to spend any more money!

So here it is...

This view is from the door from our family room looking in. That's my dad's kitchen door in the back. The door from our family room is a French door, so you can see in...I have to keep this room clean. Yikes...wish me luck on that.

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The table to the left is my work/craft table, the center hutch is storage and that's my computer desk to the right.

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The back wall is a bookcase for storage and floating in the middle of the room is my cutting table, ironing board and sewing table (which you can't see)



This unit was made from three old cheap bookcase. We replaced the back flimsy backing with bead board, my sister added the top wooden boxes to make them taller and then added crown moulding to tie the 3 together. Paint, paint and more paint!

These are the boxes from one of the TTT when I used the pipe straps. These hold all the different colored scraps of fabric.

This is another piece that I painted. It stores all those boxes I had in my sewing room. Each one is labeled with something.

Here's a close up.

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This is my work/craft table

• fabric covered cork board (still have to glue some buttons on the tacks to have them match)
• hot glue gun and drill are already set and plugged into a surge bar, so all I need to do is click a switch. The surge bar is attached to a lamp, so if the lamp is on, I know the hot glue gun is still on. Safety feature for me.
• the little wooden drawers in the back hold all the little beads and screws.
• the galvanized buckets below are from Home Depot for $12. I bought those a long time ago to hold soda, bottled water and beer when we have parties. For now it holds my batting and polyfil. Easy to bring them back out for parties.
  

The hutch is for storage. This is a super old piece of teak wood furniture that we had in the basement. Again...paint and crown moulding.

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Cereal boxes from a Tool Time Tuesday. I covered these with fabric on the spine, but painted the body of it black.

I used the pipe straps for handles and key rings to label.

This is another recycled box project. Those are all the bottled water boxes covered in fabric. Still need 3 more.

Same handles and key chains.

This is my computer desk. The frame above is waiting for a piece of sheet metal from Lowe's. Our Home Depot didn't carry it. That will be a Tool Time Tuesday at some point. My poor desk misses the laptop. That poor computer didn't have a chance in the flood.

This is on my desk. It's a globe paper weight. I had to buy this at a consignment shop. Every time I look at it, it reminds me of all the blogging friends I have made around the world. You have all made my world a better place...and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

This is my cutting table. Take a good luck at this now and all the other areas in this room, because they will never look this clean again. EVER. Even now as I type, this table doesn't look like this anymore!!

These are old plate racks that I use for my rulers.

This is a mini DVD player that I watch the Walton's on all the time.

This is from my sister. She bought it an office supply store for her work, but she doesn't use it. It's used to hold a paper as you type on the computer. I'm using it to hold a pattern as I'm cutting the fabric, so the directions are always there, not lost under piles of fabric.

Here's my ironing board covered to match the fabric on the boxes.

Just don't look underneath. I was too lazy to sew one, so I staple gunned the crap out of it!! lol

This is a super old fridge that we use for soda and water. I kept it in here...had to paint it though.

This is the before.

Here are other befores and durings...painting all the table legs. See the little bookcase in the back?

This is the bookcase before...the third one isn't in yet. See the cheap backing, it's almost like card stock that looks like wood.

This is a during picture before the shelves went in. That's the new bead board.

This is the before of the hutch when it was in the basement.

We brought the top upstairs and added to a different bottom (the buffet that was already in the room).

and here's a during picture of it painted.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my sewing room. This is why I've been behind on visiting all your blogs and trying to catch up on emails. Once the holidays are over and I buy my new machines, I'll be back in business. Some of you have asked how I made out with the insurance. The major things are covered like my Bernina, my serger and the computer, but with a major catch. Our insurance has full replacement coverage, but the only thing is, it has a "Hold Back Policy". This means they pay me for the "depreciated" value of the items up front, then I have 180 days to go out and purchase the new items, send them the receipts to prove that I purchased the same items that I lost and "then" they will repay me the difference. We also have a $1000.00 deductible, so I think I will be doing all of this after the holidays, because that means fronting a lot of money...which we don't have at the moment. In the mean time, I will borrow a sewing machine from my sister.
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I will try to take some pictures of our Thanksgiving when I turn this room back into a food buffet area. Shouldn't be too bad. I just need to store all the stuff that is on the top underneath and cover the three tables with tableclothes. Wish me luck.

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Thanks for all your well wishes during this time. I can't thank you enough for your love and support.

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Have a wonderful weekend,

~Karen~