$100 Room Challenge: New Office & Craft Room

I’m so excited to be joining Erin from Lemons, Lavender, & Laundry for the $100 Room Challenge this month! You all know I love to remodel my home. And I am always on a budget. So this challenge is just up my alley, but man, $100 does go quickly. However, I am determined to makeover my new office & craft room for just $100 this month!

So are you ready for the before pictures? This room used to be my nursery/kids room. Now I have had a huge battle with myself as to whether or not I should paint over the clouds on the ceiling. I love them! They make the room bright and cheery, but does it look too much like a nursery? I hope not because the final consensus after talking to all my advisors (aka, mom, sisters, husband, etc.) was to keep them. That is definitely going to help with the $100 budget because a gallon of paint is $30+ and I have had no luck finding anything in the oops paint section at my local home improvement store. Apparently they never make mistakes, which is good for me normally.

Since I don’t have to worry about painting the room, what are the plans for this space? First priority is a work space! I need a desk if this is going to be my office. My plan is to build a desk into one of the closets. It will leave me with more floor space for other work spaces and I only need one big closet to store craft supplies (although I could probably fill up two closets, I really need to try to keep the all this stuff under control).

When we bought our set of dining room chairs we bought 8, but only keep 6 around the table. The extra 2 use to sit along the edge of the room (which was actually in the way). So I stole one of them for my desk in the living room. Now I get to steal one more for the desk in my office. If I have time and money, I plan on making it a cute chair cover so it matches the room.

So now that I have a place for my computer and booty, the next work space is my sewing table. I love this table because it was made for sewing. It has liftable platforms for both my sewing machine and my serger. I was lucky enough to inherit this from my mom for FREE a couple years ago when she had my dad build her a fancier one. As much as it is useful, it is not pretty. My plan is to build nicer legs for it so it fits in better with my rustic home. Then I will paint the new legs and bottom of the table, leaving the white top so that the function is still there.

I also am going to need a work table. Something that is mobile would be awesome so I can push it around the room where I need to be working on it and then push it out of the way again. This work table would be even more awesome if it included storage for… craft supplies! I have been collecting boxes from bulk buying my coffee kcups and they would be perfect storage in a work table (as long as I can pretty them up a bit).

I have two other piece of furniture already in the room. This basic 12×12 cubby bookshelf that I bought oh-so-long-ago used to hold fabric bins of toys and books in the nursery. We outgrew it quickly, but I am imagining making it a beautiful rustic bookcase that I can use to display a lot of the home decor pieces that I use throughout my house, but are not in use at-this-moment. The other piece is one I bought about 15 years ago. It was last used as a china cabinet to hold some wine glasses and other randomness. But then I moved that back into the kitchen where it belongs and decided this piece would be great for use in my new space to hold supplies (OMG I have so many craft supplies and so much fabric). I love this piece, but hate the wood veneer. So it is going to need a makeover too.

Once the workspaces and furniture are done, I also need desk organization, to relocate my pegboard from my old craft space to my new office (that pegboard is one of my favorite ways to store my most used tools) and organize ALL THOSE SUPPLIES. Then some pretty new curtains would be nice. And a way to cover the storage closet up (I hate closet doors, but I’m sure I can make something fantastic). I also would love some desk lighting and a way to corral all my photography lighting equipment. Whoa, that’s a big list!

I am hopeful that I can accomplish all of that, but man it’s a big list. And it will be a challenge to do it all for only $100. Luckily, you are allowed to utilize things you already have on hand for this challenge so I am going to try to build legs and pretty up my bookcases with scraps of wood. Then see if I have enough fabric in my stash to take care of curtains and a chair cover. And there will have to be lots of creativity!

Plans for the $100 Room Challenge

• Build desk in closet
• Cover chair
• Build work table
• Add pretty legs and paint sewing table
• Make cubby bookcase pretty
• Paint glass front cabinet
• Relocate pegboard storage
• New curtains
• Closet “doors”
• Make coffee boxes look pretty
• Make a place for photography equipment
• Sconces in desk area
• Lots and lots of storage solutions

That is one long list for 1 month and only $100. Make sure to follow along so you don’t miss any beautiful, budget friendly ideas. And then check out all these other bloggers who are taking on the $100 room challenge this month! There are going to be a lot of wonderful remodeling ideas this March.

Keeping my fingers crossed I can do this!