I don’t know about you, but I absolutely love to craft. There is so much money to be saved, and so much pride in a job well done, plus when people comment on your work, it really means something. Apart from how much time it can consume, there are very few downsides to the actual hobby of crafting, but there is one serious gotcha.
That as any keen crafter will know, is the amount of space all your supplies take up. I know many crafters who use the dining room table to work on, but let’s face it, that’s not exactly a long-term solution, and that table is probably a little too expensive for you to be crafting on.
Jenny from the blog De Jong Dream House faces exactly this problem, but crafters are nothing if not problem solvers and after putting some serious thought into it, she came up with this fabulous idea.
Firstly she identified a room in the house that would be her designated craft room. Whilst I appreciate this isn’t an option for everyone if you have got a spare bedroom that can be utilised then all the better.
Her next task was to build her own storage and work table, and for this, she decided to combine both so that the table would not only provide a surface for her to work on but would also store the multitude of supplies she has.
She went to everyone’s favourite furniture store IKEA and bought three bookshelves two 4x2s and one 2×2. The two longer bookshelves went back to back in the middle of the room and she placed the smaller bookshelf at one end.
Then she filled all of those cubbyholes with her numerous crafting storage bins, and in the space of a few hours, she has decluttered her house, whilst creating the perfect working environment.
The only problem left to solve was how to get a perfectly smooth surface to work on as where the bookshelves met, was causing some unevenness. Then once again inspiration hit her when walking around Home Depot.
She saw an unfinished, unbored door, which happened to be the exact dimensions for her tabletop. She quickly bought the door and attached it to the top of the shelves creating the perfect work surface. With a little bit of grain stain to provide some colour, and the addition of some purple duct tape around the edges Jenny had created the perfect work bench and storage system for all her crafting needs. I think I might cheat a little and ask my husband to build me my one, as that’s valuable crafting time I would loose out on.
