Just When I Thought It Was Safe to Craft Again… We Nuked the Craft Room

I was so proud of myself for having cleaned up and organized the craft attic into something where I could be productive and creative again, just in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving crafting.  Behold! Lovely space that’s all ready to work in:

Alas, it was not meant to be. We had energy audit folks come in last week and we are losing 90%, NINETY PERCENT of our heat through the un-insulated roof and walls. We get the biggest bang for our buck by a) blowing insulation into the walls, some of which can be done through the attic due to how the house was built. Seriously, in MANY places I could drop a penny in an open area in the wall in the attic and it would land in the basement walls, 3 stories down. b) there is no insulation in the attic, ZILCH.  Behind those gloriously purple walls is bare wood with roofing over it (and old, rusty nails jutting out perilously.  There are a few places where you can see daylight, which explains the bird poop. Lovely eh?

So, as timing would have it, a good friend of ours is available for a week starting NOW.  He happens to be the awesome craftsman and union construction/carpenter guy (not sure what it’s officially called) who helped us tear down and rebuild our back deck this summer. But it had to be THIS WEEK or who knows when and “Winter is Coming”. Yesterday he agreed to start working this Monday (tomorrow), so today we moved everything either out of the room, or into the center of the floor to be tarped over for the partial-gut and rehab.  :: sniffles:: 

Old walls are coming down, new walls are going up over some nice new insulation. We’re also going pretty much to the edges this time, so imagine that room is now a giant triangle instead of a pentagon.  So space like this, currently behind the wall where the Cricut/Sizzix table is, is getting reclaimed:

We’re going to have to figure out how to use the new low slanted edges of the room for storage long-term – any ideas is appreciated here – we already have some fantastic dreams of cool built-ins and hanging sconces or track lighting. For now I just want a safe, warm place to craft again next week.  We’ll work the rest in slowly.  So this is what I have now…

With most of my crafting stuff under the table, and soon a tarp.  I kept some of my crafting stuff kinda available in the little room just outside the craft space. I did say kinda:

Stay tuned! I’ll keep you posted with updates on the construction and rehab.  Hoping no more surprises come along to make my craft space unavailable for more than a week.  I have Christmas gifts to start!