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Writer's pictureEugenia

Working on a Workshop

This weekend derailed my crafting a bit, but for a greater purpose. A good friend with a car was able to take me to IKEA to pick up as many needed items as they had available. These days, IKEA is never fully stocked up like in pre-Corona times, so I already knew (& dreaded) how many trips it would take to get everything I need for my workshop.


Although there were no Kallaxes to be had (which will be the storage workhouse of my workshop), IKEA did have the tabletops that I wanted & legs that were more expensive ($15 a pop!) but adjustable & I decided it was better to go for those legs & also have the customization than go home with only table tops & no way to make progress.


And boy did I make progress!

Once we got everything dragged in, I zipped about moving my boxes of craft supplies out of the way - I'd placed them in the exact place I planned to set up the tabletop space. Despite it being nine at night, I wanted, needed, to jump right in & get some tables built. Not having the storage components, it is very tough to work in the space, especially laying two tabletops down to screw in the leg bases & then add the legs. After playing Tetris with the floor for about twenty minutes, I got things set up so that I could build those tables & get them in place without killing myself.


Last night, I stopped at this point, with the tables built (though too high, which I adjusted today), & unpacked a few other goodies. When my husband gets home, I'm going to get his help hanging up that pegboard with the little containers and racks. Something tells me that the wall it's leaning against may eventually become covered in that pegboard - I know I need more time to plan it out, but I already knew exactly what to store in the few accessory pieces I bought, and I can think of a bunch of other often-used tools that would benefit from being right within reach on that pegboard.



Today I picked right back up, beginning to move some of my bins and drawers down & feeling out the best place to put them. I also took some time to go through a few drawers that were stuffed to the brim with tools from different disciplines. I had glass cutting tools, riveting tools & mosaic tools all in the same overstuffed drawer, as well as a ton of loose tiles & tile shards. I have been hoarding plastic containers for a while now & used a bunch of them to reorganize. I'm not sure where the riveting tools are going to go, but they're at least tidily separated out & the mosaic tiles are organized. The idea of finally having these on hand to easily incorporate into my work is soooooooo exciting!

By the end of the day, I'd fixed the desk height, carefully carried the desk chair down two flights of stairs, and repurposed a seedling grow light as a lamp. I also carried down 4 large drawers as well as have a dozen smaller containers. There's a particular size of container from The Container Store that I really like & now that I know I'll be using a Kallax for storage in this room, I was really worried about them fitting. Though I wasn't able to get the Kallax on this IKEA trip, we already have about a million Kallaxes (our dressing room has an entire wall, floor to ceiling, of bolted together Kallaxes). I was able to try out my boxes in one of those:


And they fit PERFECTLY! Can you imagine a more perfect fit? They fit like they were made for each other. Of all the moving parts of getting this room together, having to change storage bins due to them not fitting well (& creating a lot of wasted space plus added expense) was one of my biggest fears. But these fit so wonderfully, that whew! I feel so much better about how well I'll be able to maximize my space.



The main things left to do now are more the rest of my boxes, possibly buy more boxes, & get that darn Kallax. I'll be checking the IKEA website weekly until they show up for me to snag. I want this DONE so that I can start getting all the arranging in order & figure out the configuration that best gives me flow while I'm working.


In the meantime, we also picked up a chair on this IKEA trip. Our 2nd floor AirBnB room was a bit sparse in furniture; the other ones have couches in the bedrooms to give a little bit of a private living room feel. The 2nd floor one doesn't quite work well layout-wise for a couch. So I bought one chair with the intention of confirming that it looks good & fits with plenty of room to spare to fit another into a comfy little seating area.



What do you think? Comfy enough?

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