In my Room...

If for no other reason then what I'm about to tell you here, my husband is definitely a keeper.

It all started in January when I was about to bury the dogs with all my craft stuff in B4 (we have a four bedroom house and the rooms all have numbers).

Hubby honey got a little sick of me complaining about the disaster that was the craft/dog room. So one Sunday he decided to pull ALL MY CRAFT STUFF out of the bedroom so we could get an idea of how much storage space I needed to contain everything.

Now most of you are probably gasping in horror at the thought of your husbands/partners/roommates/parents knowing EXACTLY HOW BIG YOUR STASH IS! I just about threw an ever loving fit because I knew the end result was going to be NO MORE YARN or fabric till I finish about half the things I already had going. Needless to say my attempts to divert his efforts were soundly thwarted. He's bigger than me and I'm very ticklish.

So the room is empty, stuff is in piles in the living room and dining room by craft. To give you an idea...

I have the following hobbies:

Cross stitch - I know - but I'm good - have a Best in Show in Blackwork to prove it
Crochet - sorry - learned that first - my mother still has the afghan I made her 17 years ago when I first learned
Rubber Stamping - how to blow a LOT of money really fast, but you touch my House Mouse Stamps and I hurt you
Beading - thankfully that's contained to two small bins
Scrapbooking - very minimal
Quilting - oh the fabric I have
Knitting - oh the yarn I have

Now B4 is the smallest room in the house. Pretty much the reason why it stopped being the guest bedroom (during which I would bury the bed with craft stuff) and became the dog room. You know you spoil your pets when the pets have a bigger room than guests.

So that was Sunday in January. A ton of craft stuff piled up in two rooms.

Monday was a call from my hubby in the afternoon.

Hubby: Honey will you please see if you can go to my doctor's appt in the city with me today? I'll have to pick you at 1:00pm
Me: Um er eh - it's a little bit short notice baby (not to mention I'm crazy busy - and I really don't like driving into San Francisco)
Hubby: We'll go by IKEA on the way home and get the stuff we need for your craft room
Me: Give me five minutes. I'll make it happen. (You cannot convince you wouldn't have done the same thing)

So off we go to the doc and then off to IKEA across the bay. Week nights are MUCH better nights to go then say Saturday morning. If you hate crowds IKEA is NOT your store and crowds scare me to death.

Hubby is armed with an AutoCAD layout of my craft room, a tape measure, clipboard, an architect's scale (he was a CAD drafter in a previous life) and my credit card.

Needless to say we spent 3 hours there picking and choosing and measuring and then cramming everything into my Explorer - note to self: next time bring Ford F350 Crew Cab with camper shell. I ate my knees the whole way home.

He decides we have to see how hard it is to get one of the items put together that very night. It's already past my bedtime and I'm grumpy from lifting and carrying and toe smashing when also dropping. I leave him to it and tell him we'll put it all together Tuesday. I swear he channels the Energizer Bunny.

Tuesday - off to work. Please note that hubby honey (aka Ken) works from home. I'm running behind in leaving the office that night and lo and behold my cell phone rings and I KNOW I'm in trouble for not leaving on time to help with the construction.

Me: I'm in my car. I'm on my way. (not even a hello - nip the I know I'm late lecture in the bud quickly)
Ken: Can you go by the grocery store, we are out of cereal and I really want some bananas?
Me: (Stunned that I'm not getting the Why aren't you home helping me lecture? yet) Um sure babe, anything else?
Ken: Just the staples, milk, bread, yogurt, etc.
Me: Okay, see you in a bit....

The grocery store TAKES FOREVER. Why is it that whenever you are in a hurry you end up behind some dingbat that keeps forgetting stuff or argues about the price of something? So I end up home an hour late.

I walk in and Ken is at the door with a not too happy look on his face. Remember we put all the unbuilt IKEA stuff in the empty room the night before and all my craft crap was basically strewn around the house when I left for work that morning.

All of my stuff is missing from the main part of the house. WTF! Where's my stuff? Thoughts of a monster goodwill donation happening and me trying to steal it all back ran through my mind.

Ken: I have a client coming over so I just crammed everything back in the room
Me: Oh ok (keep reading - I'm an idiot and a gullible one at that)

So I put the groceries away and ask where the dogs are?

Ken: They got in trouble today.
Me: Sigh. What did they do?
Ken: Took exception to all the IKEA boxes and peed on a few
Me: Great. So now I have a mess to clean up?
Ken: Yeah. Could you take care of it before my client gets here
Me: Sigh. Okay (they are my dogs after all)

So I grab paper towels and the vinegar and the Nature Miracle and head into the room. Yeah I've done this before, how'd you guess?

Guess what I find:
Those are the Two PAX cabinets we bought that just BARELY fit on the short wall in the room and leave space to put the dog bed and doggy cave (aka crate).






The interiors of the PAX cabs are filled with the SKUBB canvas bins and plastic pull out drawers that I can get lids for if I want. One Cabinet now holds all my quilt fabric and the other all my yarn and knitting stuff, with a bit of cross stitch mixed in.







On the angled wall are the Billy shelves, which again fit perfectly with room to open the bedroom door all the way (couldn't do that before). All my books, and sewing kits, the stamping markers and plastic bins fit on those shelves with room to add more stuff.







The table is also IKEA. If you look at the photo to the right, you'll see that it appears the end of the table closest to the mirrored closet doors is two pieces of wood stacked on top of each other.








The Table has two leaves on either side that slide in and make the table square and SMALLER, or pull out and make it long enough to quilt a queen size quilt without most of it dragging on the floor!

(that would be my latest yellow brick road quilt which is MINE all mine - topped with a ball of Kid Merino that I haven't stuck back in its SKUBB yet.)

Now note that my stash is by no means complete because there is still lots of room on those SKUBBs. The black ones and the four on top of the cabinets don't even have anything in them yet.

So hubby honey essentially spent all day putting everything together and trying to semi organize my stash before I came home from work. The grocery store request was a stalling tactic. :-) I will give him credit. He really did have a client coming over and wanted the house to not look like a Michael's or Joann's had exploded in it. But he got it all put together. I didn't have to lift anything and I got to spend the evening organizing everything and wishing I had more stuff. LOL

Thanks babe. I love my room and the fact that the important stuff, yarn and fabric, are safe from fur and I can vacuum the room with ease.

You're the best.