The Evolution of the Garage {aka Man Room}

If anything in our home has changed more times than the number of years we've lived in this home, it's the Garage!

It started out like any normal garage.  Has a  big door, cement floor, and typically so much crap stuff piled in there it's now useless.  Are you with me?  OK, maybe that was just our garage.

Since we moved in 6 years ago, it has been the fore mentioned bottomless pit/laundry room, to play area, to workout room (LOVED that, but never used it... hmm imagine that) to wanna be stockpile.... then onto this:  (enter the blogging world)

Scrapbook Room:

This was in the front portion of the garage, and still exists.  The back half of the garage was transformed into my coupon stockpile... 

This set-up did last us a couple of years, but changed all the time with the ever growing stock.  I do miss this sometimes, but I like have the space back more than ever.  This stockpile took me a good solid 6 months to build up, and I still have laundry detergent (like 10 bottles) and I am on my last box of dishwasher tablets.  Not too bad for 2 1/2 years ago!

This past November we elected to turn the loft into a playroom, which meant doing this to the garage:

Emptied all the contents and built these:

The original plan was to use the downstairs portion of the garage as storage, but overtime the decision was made to turn it into the workshop.  

Onto one week ago, and these are our official BEFORE photos of the workshop:

Oh wow, did you manage to see that?  A big pile of junk.... useless waste of space.....  And that was after I cleaned it up... you should have seen the place.

OK, in the next photo, take a good look at that corner.  The window wall was the original home for the stockpile you saw in the previous photo.  And notice how gunky it looks.

Here it is, all ready to start construction

  

The space where the workbench will be in on the wall that leads to the laundry room.  The closed door you see is my scrapbook room.

To my surprise one night, I came out to find my husband working on this:

He was using the leftover wood I have from my bedroom remodel to panel the walls.  I was in LOVE and even more love that he thought to do this on his own.  This is one project that I am trying my hardest to have little say in, I mean it is the Man room!

OK, well back to the ugly corner... how in the world are you going to fix the 1950's updated horrible work done by who knows what contractor garbage that is running from wall to wall??

Easy, shim it up, and C-O-V-E-R that sucker up!!

I mean, truly.. what is that mess???  It's pretty frustrating for sure!

Here is what it looks like tonight....

Not too bad to take the space that had little hopes and dreams from this:

To this:

I can't wait to share the progress and it is completed, but he has some BIG plans now!!  Yay for an inspired hubby!!

Thanks for stopping by, and don't forget to check out all of the places I like to party.

A Sewing Room Overhaul {Happy Birthday Mom}

This weekend has been so wonderful, and it's only Sunday morning!!  Hooray!  The weather is finally showing some sun, and getting over 60 degrees here in Oregon.... it's one of those "there light at the end of the tunnel" feeling when spring starts showing up around here.

I've been getting so much done around the house, and can't wait to share everything.  But for today, I am going to share a little present that I did for my Mom's birthday!

Her Birthday was on April 6th, and my dad had planned to quickly whisk her away to Portland for the night so go see some friends.  So I knew it was my chance to get into her sewing storage room and get some organization done.  My Dad was even gracious enough to fund it, THANKS DAD!! 

This is not a glamorous redo by any means, but I was headed for function only.  That way if she likes the layout of the room, then her and I can get together and give the space a face lift.   So with that said, the pictures are nothing fancy!

Here is what we started with.  My mom is an amazing seamstress, but she just had no room to work.  Or so she thought.  This room is really the sun room, but she started to take it over for sewing, which then led to and ironing room, then to the cats room, then the bunny's room.  You know how that goes right?  You have a room that turns out to be the bottomless pit... YEP, that's this room!

Notice the heaping pile of ironing..... I'd say she was a little behind.... 

This view is looking into the room from the doorway into the house.  The door on the left goes out to the patio.

Here is the view from one end of the room.  It's a long narrow room, so it makes the flow a tough situation.

And here is the view from standing at the back door.  WOWSERS!

Take note of the bunny cage, the litter box, and the mass heaps of fabric and sewing notions scattered everywhere. 

How she ever managed in here I will never know!

On Friday night I got right to work.  I emptied the entire room of it's contents, leaving only the table!  What a task.  My sister did come over to help me which was great!!

Once I had sorted the contents, we made a list of needed organization supplies, and headed out to Wal-Mart.  We got back and immediately got to organizing, and moving stuff back in.

I purchased a tall cheap-o bookshelf to use for the main storage piece.  I had planned on buying a cube shelf, but who knew Wal-Mart did not carry those? 

Oh well, I do love this shelf, and I know I can make it pretty at a later date!

This shelf now houses all of her supplies, and fabric.  

I got these fun frosted lidless totes there as well.

Here is her fabric stash, so well organized!  I will share a tutorial on how I created the fabric bolts!

She had so much more room to add to her stash..... I am sure she wont mind that.

Here is a closer look of what I placed inside the totes.....

 Zippers & Seam Binding

 Threads

Patterns!

Folding the fabric actually took the most time.  Other than that, it was trying to find good homes for the other things that no longer we welcome in the sewing room.  

On her corner shelves I used the existing jars to hold seam binding and ribbon scraps, buttons, bobbins and Velcro.

On her work table I created a mason jar organizer for all of the essential tools

We also brought in this odd bar/table/desk thing that we had in our office.  It has leaves that fold out for more space, and is the perfect height for cutting fabric.

Here is the final product of organization:

So what do you think?

From this:

To this:

In less that 24 hours, and 5 kids running around!!

She was so surprised, and LOVES the layout.  Now next time we will do the fun re-vamp, because as you saw, it needs a good face lift!!

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