by Diane Henkler
Budget-friendly ideas for organizing craft supplies inside a cabinet.
Longtime followers of my work know that I dedicate an entire room in my home to crafting and creative pursuits. It is my personal sanctuary where hours slip away unnoticed.
I refer to it as my "studioffice" because it pulls double duty as both an art studio and…
…a space for managing my blog's business operations.
I enjoyed a comparable setup in our previous house, where I claimed what the builder's floor plan labeled as the formal living room. I knew from the start we would never actually use it that way since the home already had a family room.
I feel lucky to enjoy this kind of dedicated space. Growing up, I shared a bedroom with my two sisters, and in college I always had a roommate. Claiming a space of my own was a long-held dream, so when the opportunity presented itself, I seized it in a room I knew would sit unused.
When we moved to the lake, finding a property with a room I could turn into my own creative-business haven was non-negotiable. I was overjoyed when we discovered one where the room can be closed off from the rest of the house when projects get messy, and it looks out over the lake — a mixed blessing, since I sometimes catch myself staring at the water longer than I should. 🙂
The anchor of the room — both in my current home and the previous one — is a sizable antique armoire that came to us from Ed's family. I tossed around makeover concepts for a while but held off, wanting to feel certain I would love whatever direction I chose.
To test the bare look, I stripped one of the drawers to reveal the wood beneath. I was underwhelmed, so I opted for paint to inject some color.
It has been exactly a year and a week since I shared the studioffice makeover, including the freshly painted pink armoire. I closed that post mentioning that the pink chalk-paint finish still needed waxing using my homemade chalk-paint recipe, and that I might eventually paint or line the interior with decorative paper.
As it turned out, neither the painting nor the papering ever came to pass (I'll explain why shortly), but I finally finished the waxing this past weekend. It only took me twelve months to get around to waxing it.
Waxing and buffing a piece of furniture this size demanded considerable elbow grease to bring it to a satisfying shine.
I tried an electric buffer, but it performed poorly, so I finished by hand using thick, soft paper towels — specifically Shop Towels, which you can find at most home improvement and hardware stores. (My desk is casting a shadow that makes the drawers look patchy gray in the photo, but they are uniformly pink.)
The armoire is not just the biggest piece in my studioffice — it is the largest in our entire home. It is genuinely old and one-of-a-kind, and it disassembles into sections. Here it is broken down as we prepared to load it into one of the PODS containers for our move two years ago.
This armoire has lived quite a life and stands as an incredibly adaptable piece of furniture, as you will soon discover.
The armoire traces its origins back to the 1920s or perhaps a little earlier, when Ed's maternal grandparents purchased it. Its original finish was a medium brown wood stain. I have no idea what they kept inside, but that is where its story begins.
When Ed's parents took ownership in the 1950s, they used it to hold record albums and musical items. They gave it a coat of deep orange paint…
…and it was wearing that orange hue when Ed and I received it in 1984.
I dug through family photo albums searching for pictures of it and turned up just this one, which captures the side of the piece. That is my oldest daughter, about seven months old, scooting around the breakfast nook in our Durham, North Carolina home. In that house, we relied on the armoire as our kitchen pantry.
After three years serving as a pantry in our North Carolina residence, we moved to Pennsylvania. The new house had nowhere to put it, so it was relegated to the basement. We only stayed a year before relocating again, this time to New Jersey.
During our New Jersey years in the early 1990s, the armoire was reassembled and pressed into service as my clothes closet. The house had just two bedrooms, each with a single tiny closet. Ed claimed the bedroom closet, forcing me to find an inventive alternative for my wardrobe.
To convert the armoire into a closet, I removed the shelves and mounted a wooden rod for hanging clothes. I attached a full-length mirror to the inside of the right door and hung a scarf, belt, and jewelry rack on the left door. It functioned beautifully as a closet, accommodating everything except my shoes, which lived under the bed. I even added a pink floral stencil to the upper center. Do you remember when stenciling was all the rage? I scanned this photo from a decorating book…
…Instant Decorating, which I authored and that was published in 1994. You can still track down copies online for a modest price, and they are also available in my Amazon Shop.
Some of the fabrics featured in the book's projects may feel dated, but if you can look past that and imagine the projects executed with contemporary fabrics, you might uncover several affordable, no-sew decorating ideas that could refresh your home in an afternoon.
Four years later, we returned to Pennsylvania to the house where I would eventually launch my blog. I repainted the armoire antique white, which erased the stencil. I removed the mirror and clothes rod and reinstalled the shelves, transforming it into the spot where I organize and house my craft supplies. I positioned it between two IKEA bookcases. You can read about the Billy Bookcases in this post: Bookcase Makeover
For the last 24 years, the armoire has faithfully stored my craft supplies. I love her pink color, but the reason I never painted or papered the interior is that, sadly, age has not been kind to the wood on the back of the base section. It is cracking and weakening, causing the armoire to lean backward. 🙁
I will soon need to take her apart to replace the brittle, aged sections with fresh wood. Once that repair is complete, I plan to paint the interior pink or add decorative wallpaper to make opening her a genuine treat. She is decidedly feminine now, especially with her pink finish.
So in her century of existence, she has had several lives before mine. For me… a pantry, a clothes closet, and a craft storage cabinet. After we fix the base, she will continue as a craft closet, but I see a bright future ahead, with additional chapters still to be written by one or both of my daughters, who will inherit her one day.
Do you own a piece of furniture in your home that has been repurposed many times over the years or has stayed in your family for generations?
If you have been considering gathering all your crafting and decorating supplies into a single convenient spot, I rounded up several reasonably priced armoires in a range of sizes and styles.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
I am featuring them in white, though most are available in other colors and wood finishes as well. They may not have the character of mine, but they would do the job admirably and could grow into a piece of furniture with a rich, functional history.
inmyownstyle.com
