Design ReMix

Have you ever seen this show on HGTV? I don't have time to watch it much, but I've seen it once or twice over the last year or so... I love when they don't spend much money and they remake a room using things you already have in your house. Sometimes, it's just about fresh paint and rearranging the furniture that will transform a room.

I love to rearrange furniture. Nothing motivates me to really deep clean my house more than a good rearrange of the furniture. I guess I just get tired of looking at the same old arrangement. Friday I wanted to clean my "scrapbooking" desk off so I could start working on my Maui trip Friday night while Eric and Taylor were on a campout. While I was cleaning out the drawers and piles of junk stacked on the floor all around my desk, I stumbled across some fabric I'd bought at Walmart a year ago for $2 a yard. It's a cute fall colored gingham check and I bought 5 yards of it thinking that someday I'd find a use for it.

Well, in just a few minutes time, I'd changed directions completely. I finished cleaning out my desk and then went digging for more fabric left over from other projects that would match my check fabric. I found some leftovers from curtains I made in my Dublin house and started planning. For a long time, I've been wanting to make valances for the 3 windows in my loft and redo the fabric coverings on the two desks up there. I had just enough check and extra fabric to pull this off! I started cutting and sewing Friday afternoon and kept at it long into the night. By midnight, I was so tired I was making stupid sewing mistakes, so I decided to quit and go to bed. Saturday I got up and kept working and late last night (midnight again) I finished. I just need to mount the valances over the windows. I moved my desk so it no longer faces the wall and brought up our old DVD racks from the game room downstairs for extra storage. I'm really happy with how it looks and now my desk faces the computer screen, so I can pop in a DVD and watch a movie while I work!

This is the computer desk "before" picture... half the fabric covering was gone and the desk was a disaster.

Computer desk "after" shot... much better!I didn't think to take a before shot of my desk, but it was positioned against the wall in the background under the photos and had different fabric covering the drawers... everything about it was falling apart! And the piles of "stuff" everywhere had gotten out of control!View of the loft when you first come up the stairsHere's one of the 3 valances I made... obviously it will look much better over a window! Total cost for this project $20.04. I needed a 1x4, "L" brackets and screws. Can't wait to hang them up tomorrow.Now if I could just dress up the sewing table in my bedroom.... sigh....
I must put in a good word for my serger. If you do any kind of sewing, I highly recommend one of these! It's so awesome to run down a seam in lightning speed and have the seam sewn, finished and cut. You just can't beat the efficiency, especially when you are working with fabrics that frey heavily. And I only really know how to do one thing with it... imagine the possibilities when I can learn more than one technique!