Ikea Dressers + Shelves for office/sewing room

I made a little storage for my sewing room.  By little I mean big.  By my sewing room I mean the office which I'm slowly taking over as a sewing room. 

The process and before-and-after pictures are here, but the gist is I need storage to contain and hide the clutter that is often associated with work spaces, so after goofing around and stressing out for a while, I came up with the perfect solution, which is basically just some dressers and pine boards:

Everything in one place!  Fabrics in the dressers!  DIY and home improvement magazines, sewing and Burda mags, patterns in yellow manila envelopes, plus my binder of articles and how-to's and other office papers on the first shelf!  Other knick knacks and doodads are contained on the next shelf!  Whatever else on the next one!(!)   How organized it is!!!  I will give myself one month before things start to get cluttered again!  At which point I will move on to the next project!  See now you know why I don't have time to sew.

By the way, I bought a new serger :)

Happy new year, and a new Cutting Table!

Happy New Year to all!  We've stuffed ourselves, drunk our hearts out, had fun and chatted with friends and family until everybody was blue in the face.  Now it's time to start making those resolutions and pray that they will last past January 15! 

Anyway, I forgot to cross-post my entry of this new cutting table that I hacked out of Ikea Expedit shelves.  It's a pretty simple hack, and it's not even an original idea because my local Ikea has this setup in the showroom and I thought it would make a great cutting table with some adjustments.  Essentially it's just three 2x2 Expedits butted against each other, placed on top of plywood with casters, topped with another sheet of plywood, secured with the necessary hardware (L-brackets, wood joiner, glue as needed).

Now I have a move-able cutting table - with storage that can be customized with Expedit inserts - that fits my large 36" x 48" cutting mat perfectly! 

Of jewelry and a garish display

My blindingly yellow DIY jewelry display, as told here, and the sad state of my jewelry collection.

Accessorizing is not one of my strength... I wear the same things over, and over, and over again.  (Same goes with clothes, actually.)  To add to that, my taste in clothes and accessories lean toward the "plain" side, as you can see above.  Okay, I don't call it "plain" as much as understated, clean, simple, classic.

The pearl necklace (and studs, not shown) I wore daily back in '05-'07, during my "prim, proper, and preppy" stage.  With pumps and twinsets and scarves and all.  So pretentious.  The whole thing aged me 10 years, so I stopped doing that after my work office moved to the suburbs (people don't dress up much there).  The good thing though, climbing the corporate ladder was so easy, probably because people took me seriously.  Well, not anymore, of course, since I stopped wearing pearls.  I need to go back doing that.

Watches I wear everyday, alternating depending on my my mood and outfit of the day.  Hoops (the medium size, top row) I wear almost everyday now, if I'm not wearing a necklace. Necklaces that I wear most often nowadays are the long gold-tone chain (far left), and the beaded coral multi-strand (top middle).  I don't wear bracelets much, although I don't mind cuffs or chains or links (no bangles, they're noisy and generally too loose on my wrist).  I also have accepted my warm skin tone and wear gold-tone jewelries without feeling outdated.

So, as a reward to myself for finishing this jewelry display project, I'm going to shop for some new cheapo jewelry.  Perhaps something geometric, with clean lines and enough presence to make a visual impact.  Any suggestions? 

LCH: Dresser + Table top = Kitchen island

A little pictorial algebra:

 

+

=

 

=

Well, with a few steps in between, of course.  See it all here.

LCH: Kitchen makeover!

By kitchen I meant just the cabinet, and by makeover I meant just painting a color that's really different from the previous one, and slapping on some new hardware.  Voila!  I have discovered the secret of DIY with the most impact!

Enjoy the adventurous before, progress, and after post!

Some teaser pics to warm up your eyes:

Before:  Stinky, sticky, funky!

After: White, bright, light!  New camera helps too!

How do you like a big-ass fridge for the focal point?

Oh, not forgetting my other hobby... I sewed something!  And it's a dress, not a throw pillow.  Yay!  I'll post it next time.

LCH: Ottoman makeover!

Before:

After!

Times two!

Go here for more details

LCH: Rolling stand for the gigantic printer

My first woodworking DIY - check it out here