Craft Area Update / Upcycle / Recycle

   Hi all! If you have been following me for a while you know that I Craft in my unfinished basement. we make good use of our space down here. Hubby and I have a makeshift bedroom (walled off by heavy curtains. We have a gaming / TV area as well as laundry, wood stove and 3/4 bath.

  I have wanted to do something new with my craft storage wall for a while but did not really want to spend much money. I am hoping in the next few years to be able to move upstairs when my kids move out.

  So for the past 4 days I have been working my but off refurbishing a set of rusty, dirty shelves I grabbed free from the driveway of a neighbor. Here they are right after I got them home...

   Yup they are pretty grimy! After much scrubbing they looked a bit more like this...

   After lots of sanding and scraping I began Painting....

   I used flat white Rustoleum. After 3 cans of the spray and 1 quart of the paint (total supply cost was around $30.00) they looked like this...

   

  Yup I know there is a whole in the bottom of one but I'm not worried about it. 

   

   My boy helped me move them to our basement and I was ready to get started. My before looked a bit like this (I forgot to purposely get a good photo.

Now my space looks like this!

   I just LOVE it! I have a few more inches of room between this and my desk and it is much brighter. Also I can see everything better. Things are more spread out instead of being stacked behind and on top of each other! 

   Two of the shelves are anchored to the joists above but only with rope for now. Hubby Will help be do a proper job with steel strapping when I am sure this is working well. I did try to keep the heaviest items on the bottom or lower shelves and I do have blocks of wood (some are wood blocks from old wood mounted stamps!) under the corners by the legs for extra support. 

   I even finally got my desk clean!

My Storage wall is behind me as I sit here. With a busy family I like to be able to look out and see what is going on. I do not like looking at walls!

   Here is a super sped up video of my progress... 

   This project led to lots of shifting around the house. The piece I pulled out went to the opposite side of the basement to actually be used for its purpose... an Entertainment center and looks great. The cubes the basement TV was sitting on went up to the boys room to be the base for a desk. (Still working on that one... 

  If the weather had not worked out so perfectly admittedly I probably would not have pushed so fast to get this project completed. I am sooooooo glad I did!

I hope I have inspired you to try something new or repurpose items you have around you. I could have easily spent HUNDREDS of dollars on a similar project.

Thanks for stopping by!