There’s a Venn diagram with “young, fit, and sober guests” and “musicians” and the overlap is “sleeps in Immaculata’s attic.”
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@TheMistressT open shelving is a more budget friendly option and it does make a kitchen look lighter. I’m afraid that all the cabinets we are adding will make the space seem constricted. But we want and need the storage.
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Indeed open shelving is a cost saver, but I think it only creates openness if you have so much other storage that you have hardly anything on them and everything is “nice.” This is absolutely not the case for my kitchen! Sigh.
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I forgot to take a before photo, but my husband, a friend and I demolished a wall and took apart a “bar” alcove today…
We will be building a bedroom down here, and doing a few other things.
We’ll be hiring a handyman for the building portion, but figured we’d save ourselves a bit of cash and do the demolition ourselves.
Where the floor is missing, there used to be a wall. It’s always bothered me that we had this gigantic laundry room and a tiny “living space” down here.
There are some complications with building a bedroom here, such as where to put a window, because the window you see in the picture has the deck squarely in front of it. The bedroom window will likely go somewhere around where the treadmill is in this picture, but we’ll do some consultation with a window person (and they’ll install the window too, of course).
This used to be the kids’ play area, but as they’re getting older they have been playing in their rooms more. Also, once we build a bedroom down here, they’ll have more space in their own rooms to have their toys there (currently the younger 2 share a room).
This is what the part between the floored area and concrete floor looked like before, minus the little “stage,” as that came out when we redid the flooring.
Continuation of the wall that we took down today.
These photos are quite old; the basement had already changed quite a bit since we had created this little playroom. We had changed the flooring and added shelving for the toys, and my husband had built a set of monkey bars for the kids to play in the winter. That came down a few months back as the kids are all too tall for them now. So the basement is in its 3rd or 4th iteration at this point, lol
Here’s a photo of when we first added the flooring and built some shelves for toy storage
The plan is to finish insulating the walls, because that was never done properly (as you can see in the first picture at the back.
Then the goal is to build a bedroom, a small office for my husband, create a small space for the cat’s stuff, organize a laundry room that makes sense (I really, really don’t like our laundry room), and if we can salvage a tiny bit more space, a small exercise area.
For now we’re eating one slice at a time and just demolishing. Next is talking to the handyman about the insulation. Construction will come after all that.
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The bathroom is officially done.
We spent the last two and a half days clearing out the foyer and living room so they could demolish it. Had to move the fish and his tank - he was not pleased. We threw away so much… A couch, an entertainment center, and who knows how many bags of random stuff. I have a trunk full of donations.
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Bathroom looks great! The rest looks like you’re on your way!
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Wow, you guys are doing so much!! Love the bathroom.
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Bathroom is wonderful. So clean and bright. And I bet it feels good to get rid of so much stuff.
I took all the upper cabinet doors off today and washed them down. So much dust and grunge in places. Start sanding tomorrow.
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Thank you!
Grime does tend to build up, despite the inordinate amount of time we devote to its removal. I need to tackle mine, too. We were going to salvage the brass hinges from the doors before they get taken out. I’m sure someone would be able to use them.
This is my best chance to be rid of some clutter in the house, and, yes! every bit that goes out the door is a relief. There’s nothing wrong with being a maximalist, but so much is just stuff that was tucked away instead of being dealt with… outgrown clothes, receipts we no longer need, toys that were forgotten, accessories for a discarded appliance…
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I got my bookcase up in my room! It’s a used bookcase that I bought renovated. It’s not a valuable antique, but it’s old, and I bought it already renovated, so it was a bit more expensive than the average thrift shop bookcase. But it’s very sturdy, as well as beautiful, and most important, it’s huge!
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It’s beautiful! I’m jealous - I adore big, old bookcases.
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I have my parents circa 1950s dining set. The chairs are not particularly pleasing and don’t match the rest of the set, but I’ve never replaced then, just recovering seat cushions on occasion. The last set of covers were just a quick “must keep the cat hair off the light tan cushion” fix. The cushions are a bit worn now and the covers are not to my taste, they are on most the time so we can whip them off when guests are imminent.
I found a site that sells upholstry remnants and picked out something more pleasing. I just finished them today. Our house was overrun with electritions and sewing kept me out of the way.
Now I stull need to source some cat friendly top covers as the cats love to sleep under the table on the chairs. And the chairs are on the porch because the dining room is full of kitchen stuff during kitch reno.
Old temp covers.
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Nice! I think the chairs look really good with these new cushions. And you can save a fortune by making these kind of things yourself. Sleeping on chairs is just such a cat thing to do. The cat we had when I was a kid did that too - and the chair didn’t even have a nice cushion, it was a rush seat.
I invested money in a life-changing thing today. I bought a proper lightbulb for my craft room! A very bright natural light LED bulb. It’s such a huge difference compared to what I had previously. Cost me €6 which is probably the most I’ve ever spent on a single bulb.
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My pneumatic brad nailer died today, just halfway through attaching the last back to the cases. Blarg! it’s almost 30 years old, so I guess it served its purpose, but such a bummer. I found a well reviewed one on sale in the nearest city and ordered it to pick up. It will probably be ready tomorrow (Sunday), but I have to go into town on Monday anyway. I already had a tool snafu earlier this week that set me back a couple days, so I’m a bit disheartened. Oh, well. Luckily, nothing much is actually riding on me getting this done at any particular time - I just want to be progressing.
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The new 6 inch wafer lights in the kitchen are amazing. Actual light! And on a dimmer just outside the kitchen instead of across the room, behind the fridge. We couldn’t install the switch imside the entry to the kitchen because of duct work. But it’s just as convenient.
Removed several cabinets today, removed part of the old copper backsplash. Unfortunately, it extends 4" below the counter top. And we aren’t ready to remove that yet, but need to get the wall ready for tile. My DW is fixing the pass through to the ding room and it’s a mess of decades of home improvement. It needs to be 2" narrower to accomodate a pantry cabinet. Fun times.
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I’m having an ongoing problem in my studio where I don’t have a good way to store large 18x24 paper pads, and to a lesser extent 14x18, and I expect both to become more of an issue very soon as I’d like to start working larger.
My current solution is this Alex unit with the bottom drawer removed which, as you can see, the 18x24 paper pads just fit. This solution is also cumbersome when more than 3-4 pads get stacked on top of each other.
The paper pads don’t have a lot of rigidity to them and I don’t want them to warp so storing them vertical isn’t an option I’d like to pursue. The only use for this unit is storing large pads and boards and I have a lot of wasted space inside the drawers because of the internal dimensions. I already have twice as much as this stored in another Alex unit upstairs that I’d like to bring down to the studio.
I’m currently toying with a few ideas
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Remove more (most?) of the drawers and have my husband build me an insert that slides in adding shelves (similar to how the inserts fit into the Kallax). This would be the least destructive option but would mean I’d lose the width of the side supports (envision a giant H or a ladder being inserted into the unit) which would make fitting the pads difficult if not impossible (mainly an issue for the ones with spiral binding).
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Remove more (most?) of the drawers and drill holes to put the little clip things like you have in cabinets/bookshelves to hold shelves where the shelf just sits on top. This gets me the full width of the unit but the shelves I want to use are 1/4" hardboard and I worry about them sliding around and/or bowing if I put non-full width items in the middle. I don’t know if this would affect the structural integrity making the cabinet prone to sheering (I think that’s the right word?) when I need to push it around the space and only push on one side.
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Same as #2 but with clips that hold the top and bottom of the shelf. This addresses the bowing/sliding issue but would make getting the spiral paper pads in more cumbersome and might catch on the spirals.
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Remove more (most?) of the shelves and have my husband saw shelf rails into the side supports. Envision #1 but without the two sides of the H, so the shelves would be like this - and slid into place. This is the most destructive option but would allow for full width use and the shelves would be secure and removable. If I wanted to in the future I could remove the shelves and reinsert the drawers but I would be able to see the cutouts for the shelves from the front of the unit.
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Same as #4 but with the shelves glued into place. This is the most permanent and destructive solution but also the strongest. Downside is I couldn’t adjust the shelves later if I decide
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Have my husband build me a new unit. Pros: he can make it exactly how I want (I’d love for it to be about 5" taller, I use the top a lot as a surface and I always have to bend over), and it doesn’t alter the existing unit. Cons: time and cost and I don’t have another use for the existing unit and I don’t have space to keep it in the studio.
I was somewhat leaning towards #5 but now that I realized if I have him build me something I can make it taller that seems very appealing. 
Congrats to anyone who read my thorough analysis of my storage situation 
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Could he build a sort of box a bit wider and taller than the unit you have, reattach the wheels? It could even have a drawer.
They do similar “boxes” for vanities that need to be taller without affecting the vanity itself.
For the sides, he could put in dowels or something to hold rolled papers, tall items?
lol…my crude drawing…sure your husband could make it exactly to your liking!
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That’s a good idea and would keep the drawer unit.
To be honest, the only reason the drawer unit is in the studio is because I already had it, I would not have purchased it for the studio since I knew I was getting the tool chest. Because of the space, I can’t really go any bigger on the footprint and the drawers are kind of useless to me because of their size and my storage needs. All options that involve the unit are solely because I already have it, not because I want it.
The more I think about it, the more I realize what I actually want is an open shelf unit. We took the approach for the studio to make it exactly what I wanted and to not try to force things to work that aren’t working so I think I’m going to do some measuring and put together a diagram for him 
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I agree with your “why make do” attitude! You worked hard on getting the right studio working for you. Trying to fit a square peg into a round hole seems counter to all the great things you have already done to make your space special!
I am sure your husband would love to make something that will add to your journey as an artist. He has skills that he can share with you. Perfect collaboration!
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