My sewing room makeover is more of a brush up, really.  The entire messy journey began a few years ago when my Mom and I picked out the wallpaper.  We love old Charleston, SC architecture and interior design, and we saw this paper and thought, “Charleston”.  When my Dad hung the paper, we gasped and realized when covering this much wall, it’s actually “old lady”.  My stepmother told me the roses talked to her.  Friends told me the pattern was so bold, it kept them up at night.  Greg quietly tolerated what had become of our second guest room.  Because our main guest room includes a private bath, this room rarely sees company, so for many moons…we left it.  I never had the heart to take it down, as secretly, there was a part of me that liked something about how it made me feel.  Because these past five years have included the loss of so many grandparents, this paper reminded me of them.  I enjoyed sewing here, surrounded by roses so bright, only my grandmother could have known why I loved them.  They are the exact type and shade of the very roses she grew on over 200 bushes in her backyard.  For the life of me, I could remedy the room, but I couldn’t tear it apart.

It started with this light.  This very expensive light (which is actually white, but hard to photograph apparently).  My parents gave it to me as a Christmas present, and knowing I was ready for some fix-it advice, my sister picked it out.  As much as I cringed at the pricetag,  I will say the company who made it is great, and delivered everything as promised, exactly when promised.  Schoolhouse Lighting makes absolutely stunning period pieces.  They probably aren’t pricey at all, but my readers well know, I get itchy at buying anything new, and anything above the $20 mark.

The Nantucket Beadboarding came next.  I wanted the real stuff, so there was some waiting involved.  And then some begging of my husband and Dad to put it up as a birthday present to me.  And then there was the chair railing.  And the caulking.  And the sanding and hole filling.  And painting…that went on for what felt forever.  It wasn’t, but my God, I thought I might die with a paintbrush in my hand.  One cannot roll Nantucket Beadboarding.  Let me restate that: a person with my limited painting skill set cannot roll Nantucket Beadboarding.  Those millions of grooves were all caulked and handpainted by me.

Then came the issue of the big tables in the room that no longer worked.  I kept my sewing table, because it’s been with me since college, and it is the perfect work height.  I hesitate to mess with that cheap, yet perfect, table.  I remembered that my Mother-In-Law had left some sort of entryway table with me that she no longer needed.  Greg produced it from the attic, and my only thought was, “PERFECT”.  Because what started out as the picture above, I knew I could turn into this:

Flush with white paint, the table cost me $4.67 (new cracked glass knob to match the new lamps). I still need to solve the “there is a computer on my floor” issue, but I’ve waited 3 years; I’ve got time.  Moving onto the chair that didn’t exist.  I have always sewn using a fold up chair, which was too short, and not terribly comfortable.  It angled my legs away from my presser foot, but it was free, and I knew that “new” wasn’t what I was looking for.  I was looking for something that would add depth and was small enough that it could be moved out of the way easily.

I found this perfectly aged chair in the bathroom of an antique mall.  I wish I were joking.  Finally, Kelly’s endless tour of every public bathroom on earth has paid off.  It was in a far-flung corner, covered in antiques, and for sale.  While Sara and Kelly and I visited an oddly shaped antique mall’s very antique bathroom, we found the world’s most perfect chair.  Odder things have happened to us, but those are stories for another day. We unearthed it and took turns sitting on it, all agreeing it was everything we had been looking for.  They asked if I intended to repaint it.  I wouldn’t dare.  I washed it very, very, very well, with an antibacterial cleaner, and placed it next to Peter Pan.  I love it as much as I love the beadboarding.

There are new white curtains I found on clearance at Target for $18.  My armoire stands at the ready, as it has for many, many years.  It has been a closet, a TV armoire, a quilt storage unit, and now, a sewer’s dream.  If you define dream as “messy fabric and notions holding area”:

I’m not going to lie, what you see is about as organized as my sewing gets.  The aura of the room has seen a huge transformation.  The influx of so much white with the large window has made the room extraordinarily sunny, quite possibly the brightest room in the house.  The girls play in this room almost every day.  For a week, it was impassable with toys as they played a new game they call “Attic”.  It involves them filling every square inch of the floor with dolls and blankets and sundry other “required or the game simply can’t go on” toys, so honestly, I’m not sure how Attic differs from any other game.  It’s taken me a while to take pictures, just because the space is in constant use.  We’ve had company (who didn’t complain that the room gave them insomnia), and crafting and sewing and gaming.  When we bought the house, only the green edging on the bedspread differentiated this room from any other blank space, so it was called “The Green Room”.  When the wallpaper went up, it became “The Yellow Room”, or “the room only Mommy can enter without getting motion sickness”.  It’s now known as “The Nantucket Room”, named after my favorite island on earth.  My days living on Nantucket changed my life, and to have a place in my house that takes me back to not only the island, but to my grandparents rose garden as well, is a match made in heaven.  My eyes spy the corner of this room every time I walk up the stairs, and it fills me with wonderful memories and loving thoughts.  Surely the crafts and clothes that come out of this room will be better and brighter as a result!