The New Shelf

Those of you who have seen the upstairs of our home know that I have been using an extra bedroom as my arts and crafts space for years. It's been quite nice to have all the supplies stored in one area and to be able to just go into this quiet room to make cards, wrap gifts, design scrapbook pages, etc. However, now that we are waiting for our children to come home, the time has arrived to give up the luxury of this space and begin turning the room into the kids' bedroom. In order to do so, I had to find a new spot for all of my arts and crafts stuff.

For as long as we have lived in this house, I have been wanting a built-in shelf in the loft around the window where there was an unused 16 inch-deep space from floor to ceiling. We finally decided to move forward with my shelf idea, so that I could use the area as my new arts and crafts storage. Here's a photo of the space before we changed it:

We solicited the help and expertise of a good friend, drew up an idea for how we wanted the shelf to look, headed to Lowe's to buy supplies, and then started building. I should probably be honest and say that my main job was trying to stay out of the guys' way as they measured and cut, carried and assembled everything. My sole contribution was serving them a hearty lunch.

It took about three weeks to get the shelf completed. The bulk of it was built in one long day, but putting up the trim, filling in nail holes, applying two coats of primer and a coat of paint added some extra time to the job. I am happy to say that I was able to help with the latter parts of the project.

Here's is the final product of everyone's efforts. Many thanks to our friend Bryan who truly was the main force behind getting the shelf built and making it look so nice. We are really happy with how it turned out and I am very excited about the extra storage which I have already begun to fill. I still have to find a few containers to hold some of the items that will be relocated to the shelf. Then it's on to painting the children's room.