Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Life

Tag: craft room

  • Transform Your Shed

    If you’re lucky enough to have both a garage and an outdoor shed, perhaps it’s time to consider a few shed design ideas to repurpose the space and turn it into a home away from home, the adult version of a kids’ tree fort. Find a place to store the garden tools and the lawnmower in the garage, and take advantage of a retreat to your own backyard.

    If you plan to use your shed year-round, you’re going to want to make sure it’s wired, so make an appointment with your electrician to get an estimate of what’s involved. Don’t forget to install a light on the outside of the shed too so you can see to get back to the house after dark. In really cold climates you’re probably going to want to add insulation as well.

    Create a craft room

    An old woodshed is a perfect space for crafting, especially if you install a skylight and some more windows. Most older sheds are lit with a single overhead fixture and are designed for storage, not habitation. That won’t work for crafting. But hopefully, you can repurpose some of the things that have been stored there for years. Old doors make great craft tables, and if you have three or four of them you can create a U-shaped work area just by removing the doorknobs and laying them on sawhorses or attaching metal table legs. Bonus: the holes from the knob openings will let you thread electrical cords through your craft tables so you won’t trip over them in a small space. If the shed’s big enough, you might even be able to invite friends over for a weekly craft night.

    Make it a she-shed

    Home decorating is, in many ways, the art of compromise. Furniture and paint choices aren’t a solo act when you live with others, and often practicality wins over taste, especially if you have young children. Whether your personal taste is frilly, feminine and pink or white-with-splashes of color and blond wood, a she-shed is the place to create a room full of things you love. That includes pieces of art that bring you joy but make the rest of your family cringe. It’s also the perfect place to curl up in a comfy chair, indulge in your favorite “guilty pleasure” TV viewing, or read in peace and quiet. 

    Home gym

    Even small sheds should be able to hold the equipment you need for a home gym, whether it’s a recumbent or stationary bike, a rowing machine, a hula hoop, a bench and weights, a mini trampoline, or just a yoga mat. Think of all the time and money you’ll save on commuting and a gym membership. If you design your shed like a dance studio with a back wall of mirrors, the space won’t seem as small and you’ll be able to check your form to avoid injury.

    Shed as music room

    Whether you play or just listen, most sheds are quite a bit larger than music room practice cubicles, and that may be just what you need if you have a youngster in the early stages of mastering a musical instrument. Giving your kids some privacy to practice without an audience may save everyone’s sanity, whether they’re learning violin or drumming. As they grow up, the shed could become a rehearsal space for your teenager’s band. Or you could start your own string quartet.

    Home office/artist studio

    More and more people are telecommuting on either a part-time or full-time basis. Unless your home has an extra bedroom, it may be difficult to carve out the space you need to concentrate on working from home. An insulated shed with good lighting, a coffee maker, kettle, and bar fridge makes for a perfect home office. 

    If you’re a visual artist or a potter, you can renovate your shed only to “studio” specifications: no carpeting, a floor that’s either easy to clean or that you don’t plan to clean (other than sweeping), and a constant source of natural light whenever it’s available. You’ll need a nearby source of water for brushes and pottery wheel clean-up, but chances are good you’ll be able to use your garden hose for at least eight months of the year.

    When thinking about transforming your shed from just a storage space to a room you plan to occupy, try to think of it as an addition to your home. And if gardening is one of your passions, there’s nothing wrong with turning your shed into a space for potting plants, drying herbs, and starting next season’s seedlings. 

    Find more ideas on taking advantage of outdoor space in our Outdoor Design channel.

  • How to Create a Craft or Sewing Room

    Making and enjoying crafts requires space to spread out and be creative and to quickly store your masterpiece-in-progress whenever you’re interrupted or called away. In addition, you’ll need even more space to store the materials and tools you use in an organized and productive way.

    You can start small with a corner desk in a spare room, or double up so your home office allows you to do personal work. Or you can find space in your basement, addition, or heated garage. Before you create a room of your own, think about craft room decor at the start and you’ll end up with a room that’s not only functional, but one you want to spend time in..

    Lighting, a good, big working surface, storage, and easy access to tools are four of the most important aspects to creating room for your crafts. A devoted crafter needs a large working table, a storage cabinet, an easily organized and accessible grab-’n-go tool rack, and a sink or rough equivalent to get started.

    Lighting

    LED panels are cheap and quick to install. Go to a Home Depot or Lowe’s to find easy-to-install, plug-in lighting panels that will illuminate even the darkest space. 1000 lumens is more than enough light for the average-size room. A new 1000 lumen LED panel should cost you less than $60.

    Work Table

    Most kitchen counters are 31 inches above the floor. Using that as a guideline, a 31-inch surface  provides you with an easily accessible working platform that doesn’t require stretching or stooping.

    If you don’t have a folding table already, check online used shopping sites in your area for cheap or free tables. If you want or need to make a solid table, go to a local Habitat for Humanity ReStore and purchase an old hollow core door as a table surface. In larger cities, you could try your local Ikea and purchase a table or desk surface for less in the discount room, where the components of broken furnishings are unpacked and sold cheaply.

    Online shopping is useful not only for cheap, ready-made table surfaces, but also for free, broken tables. If you find one with functioning legs, detach its broken surface and reuse the legs for your hollow core door or Ikea desk surface. The advantage of screw-in legs is that they’re not bulky, so you can store other material you will need for your crafts right there at hand. Anything from fabrics to colored or wrapping paper can fit, and larger tools like hair dryers or paints might also be accommodated, depending on their size.

    Once the table is assembled, attach rulers or measuring tapes to two adjoining sides of your surface to help you measure your crafts quickly and easily. You can also use a yardstick to draw a square grid on the table surface with a pencil, then make these marks permanent with an indelible marker or chalk paint. You can attach magnetic strips to hold tools you will use for your crafts on the wall above the table.

    Storage Cabinet

    A lot of material goes into making crafts. You need to organize them or you’ll get buried in an avalanche of paper, ribbons, and fabric. When it comes to getting organized, you can store hangers for school-sized colored paper rolls on the back of your craft room’s door. It’s a little extra space bonus.

    Then,  find an old filing cabinet, a kitchen hutch, or a library card catalog in any one of your favorite thrift spots. Repaint your treasure so that it’s fresh (you could even color-code the partitions), then position it against an easily accessible wall and attach a light on a spring arm so you can root around in the various cubbies looking for that gorgeous spool of thread or ball of wool.

    Alternatively, find an old desk with many drawers. Remove the desktop and replace it with a thick sheet of glass. Now you have a second working surface that enables you to look into the storage drawers to locate things as they come to mind. On top of the repurposed desk, you could put a modular bookcase to store more material and tools.

    Grab-and-Go Tool Rack

    Do you sew, knit, or do paper crafts? You will need special tools for each craft. Organize your pencils and markers and your needles and scissors by color and size, and deposit them in visible and easily accessible mason or pickle jars. If you are short on jars, you may be able to find some at your local recycling center.

    If not, you can chop equal lengths (five to seven inches) of PVC piping with a hacksaw blade and glue them together with plumber’s adhesive. If you’re storing paint brushes, stuff strips of corrugated board into the open necks of the PVC containers to separate different colored brushes.

    Happy crafting!