diy | Hicks House

One of my favorite things about this house is that I finally have a place to do my crafts. As the owner and designer of Dani Designs, having my headquarters on the dining room table of our old condo left much to be desired. All my fabrics and accessories were upstairs, sewing machine downstairs so doing a project required lots of stair climbing. A bit of a workout however not the most productive use of time. Having to constantly pack up and put away my sewing machine also didn’t bolster my creative spirit.

So with a designated Dani Designs Headquarters in the third bedroom, the creative wheels start spinning on just how to decorate such a space. Much time was spent on Pinterest and Houzz looking at endless inspiration photos, then much more time spent looking for things that you didn’t need to be a millionaire to afford.

This is the original room I saw on Houzz that had me swooning:

Traditional Home Office by Mckinney Interior Designers & Decorators JDS DESIGNS

Isn’t it dreamy? Everything about this room is so welcoming and makes me want to create things here. However it doesn’t really meet my needs as this is more of a home office than a sewing room, plus it looks oober expensive. So this is the mood board I came up with for the room that is more practical while retaining the color scheme of the inspiration room:

craft room mood board

I think I’m going to keep the pale blue and white color scheme, I just like the feel of it. Hopefully I’ll eventually get a glamorous chandelier as well.

So far the tables have been purchased by way of a massive Joann sale. (They were specifically chosen due to the sale price – table aesthetics came second to super cheap)

They came in boxes like this…

Which looks like a whole lot of Ikea-eque building. But you get what you pay for I guess, I’ll have to draw your eye to the beautiful curtains I am going to attempt to make. In all of my sewing this is a task I have not yet tackle. I’m a little intimidated but I think the end result will be worth it.

Before we bought our house, even before we started thinking and looking for a house we would often find ourselves in the kitchen organization aisle at the home improvement stores. You know the ones, they have every gadget you could possibly imagine, that you never knew you needed until you saw it and realized how you never needed it before because its the BEST THING EVER??!!! Yeah… that aisle.

We would dream and say if we ever built our own house someday and were able to get in there from the very beginning we would have the most awesome organized kitchen we’d ever seen. Well we didn’t get in to the house before it was built, so we didn’t have any say in the layout (I think the builder is very grateful for this – we’re kind of annoying). Despite that, we still wanted to do some customization.

Enter Rev a Shelf. They make all these handy pull out organizers and things for your kitchen that you can install after the fact. Look at all the awesome things they make! (Note: This post is not sponsored or supported by Rev a Shelf) We wanted it all. Seriously, we debated in the aisle forever trying to narrow down to a reasonable number. So we started with this:

Its the basic pull out two tier shelves

They only come in set sizes, so first measure the interior of the cabinet you want to install it in and get the size closest that is not bigger than your cabinet or it will not fit.

dry test fit

screw in one side

The shelf is actually only attached on one side which is how you can get away with a size that is slightly smaller than your cabinet. Which for us turned out to be useful since the right side of our cabinet doesn’t open all the way due to it being next to the stove. We were able to combat the problem by screwing the shelf into the left side and it just clears the door.

Shelves installed

look at that slide!

pots and pans in the new shelf

The shelf is amazing!!! I seriously don’t know how we ever lived without it. We used to have to take out every pot and pan just to get the one we wanted out of the back of the cabinet. The slide mechanism of the shelves makes such perfect sense I don’t know why all cabinets aren’t built this way to begin with. Everything is so easy to find now, and when you see the one you want its easily removable without having to empty everything out.

We loved it so much we put in two more. Each of the cabinets that are in the center island also got a rev a shelf:

island cabinets

The install isn’t quite as easy as the directions suggest. They had a complete install time of 30 minutes and it took Ken closer to an hour to do the first one, and he’s an above average to expert assembler. Despite that, even he says its worth it, and was willing to tackle the project two more times.

So what do you think? Do you want to install your own?