My weekend project

[jan_andrea]

Here is what my fabric storage area used to look like:



Here is what it looks like now:



What it took, yesterday:

• 30 minutes attaching "bar carrier" (not quite a roof rack, but it did the trick) to the roof of the car
  
• A drive of one hour and 40 minutes to Stoughton, MA, including a gigantic tailback at route 24 because this is "tax-free weekend" in MA, which we didn't know, else we would definitely have gone last weekend instead. (We had waited until this weekend because we thought that some other family members would be joining us, but one set went last week without telling us, and the other set, the set we'd waited until this weekend to go with, decided at the very last possible minute not to go. This irks me beyond words, because if we'd known, we could have just gone last week and avoided the below...)
  
• About 45 minutes waiting in horrendous traffic once in Stoughton and near Ikea -- because it was tax free weekend, everyone who couldn't do math and wanted to save an astonishing $5 per $100 purchase decided that this was the weekend they, too, would go to Ikea. It took us 30 minutes to park after sitting in traffic for 15 minutes in the shopping area.
  
• Another couple of hours in Ikea itself, which wasn't as unpleasant -- it felt less busy than the first time we'd gone, which was about 4 months after the location had opened -- but still tiring.
  
• 25 minutes in the checkout line, after waiting 15 minutes to get a hand truck to put the shelves on
  
• Another 30 minutes leaving Ikea with the rest of the sheep
  
• 1.5 hour drive home, with a stop at Trader Joe's
• Heavy lifting of shelving units into dwelling
• Heavy lifting of shelving units up two flights of stairs
• 30 minutes removing part of fabric and whatnot from old storage
  
• 1 hour assembling "Flarke" TV units (the ones on the bottom) before bedtime
  

Today:

• 2.5 hours assembling shelves and whatnot (after checking with curmudgeonly neighbor that hammering at noon would be acceptable)
• 20 minutes hauling old storage downstairs... owie...
• 30 minutes removing the rest of the fabric and whatnot from the old storage stuff
• 10 minutes vacuuming and putting new units into place
• 3 hours putting fabric and whatnot into new storage (generating two large bags of leftovers in the process)

And now, I am exhausted, but happy with the new storage. The cedar chest was lovely, but not suited for fabric that would be riffled through on a regular basis, as stuff tended to wad up and get burried, no matter how often I rearranged it. Now I can order some more fabric (need more lightweight twill, I think), and not have to worry about where to put it!

Comments

[tafagirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, I *like* it! Looks almost like a shop ;-)

Do you have any problems with dust wrt the open storage? I'm trying to figure out what to do with my yarn after moving ...

[jan-andrea.livejournal.com]

Dust hasn't been an issue so far, because I go through my "inventory" pretty quickly. If you were looking at this sort of shelving, though, you could get boxes with or without covers to put the yarn in.

[tafagirl.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm thinking of :-)

[poeticdream.livejournal.com]

Total evnvy!! All my fabirc is in a box in my bedroom, my thread somehwere in my office of dissray, my drafting table still dissasembled and my sewing machine still in it's box in the closet. :-(

[solielarana.livejournal.com]

impressive, Jan!

[lemmings-world.livejournal.com]

Wow! ::envy:: Come over and help me reign in my fabric corner? I think it snapped at the kids the other day.

It looks wonderful!

[joy-disaster.livejournal.com]

Wow! That looks terrific! Which storage "line" is that? We have a little bit of Billy, but those square shelves look perfect for cloth/yarn storage.

[jan-andrea.livejournal.com]

The shelves on the bottom are the "flarke" TV unit ($25/each) and the square ones are "expedit" ($75/each for that size). They make Expedit in several sizes -- the 2x4 that we have, also 4x4 and 5x5. I'd love the latter two, but there's no space upstairs for it.

[bean77.livejournal.com]

It looks great! I like the cubbies.

beautious!!

[chloe-child.livejournal.com]

gasp!
its positively "MARTHA STEWART" ORGANIZED!
applause for you...now help me with my crap (craft) room?
wahh....i'm a louse.

[brunahildm.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry we caused you inconvenient traffic - I didn't quite realize that we were the only reason you didn't go last week. Saturday just turned out to not be good because my computer blew up (smoke and flames!) to the tune of $200 something, thus putting us further behind in the money department, and I was all head-zappy and full of vertigo from missing my drugs on Thursday. I actually spent most of the day in bed.

But I'm glad you got awesome storage out of it, anyway! It looks great!

Maybe we can babysit sometime to make up for the scheduling badness.