Ah, All My Crafting Stuff is Organized... Now I Have No Desire to Craft

In the short life of this blog, you may have read between the lines and realized that this household has a serious craft supply problem. Not wanting to spend money on tons of bins or a whole insane Martha Stewart just pwned (that's right, I brought back "pwned") your closet system, I gained inspiration from my dad's old workshop and got PEGBOARD! Brilliant, right?! But before you get too excited, let me say I quickly began to second-guess my brilliance.

So, peg board comes in one size and one color-white. If you noticed in my spray painting post, the white got sprayed a lovely blue that is honestly too dark for the basement but I'm so in love with the color that I really don't care... plus I'm not spray painting it again.

ANYWAY! I'm at the Home De-pot, and I figure, "I wonder what they have here for pegboard accessories?" (so I don't have to make ALL my own). I found this kit that gave me a little of everything (perfect!) but due to hesitations, I didn't open up the box until I was done hanging the board... that's a key detail.

Luckily, I figured out at the Home De-pot (as opposed to going home and finding out I'm totally missing five things- which I'm pretty good for) that the board has to sit away from the wall about a half an inch in order to attach any hooks. Oh, well, that works out because now I can go buy some 3/4 in. thick wood and mount those to wall and then mount the boards to the wood and they'll be more sturdy. I even had the foresight to spray paint the wood since I knew it would be exposed on one side and would show through some of the holes! I thought I was on a damn roll, people!!!

But then karma just had to be nasty (totally unnecessary, I didn't do anything to karma).

First off, I have come to assume that none of the walls in the basement are flush or level with... anything. They're just a 2-dimensional amorphous blob shape. But we're going to work with it! I really just wanted the boards as flush to each other as possible and as flush to the ceiling as possible. This is when we learn that I have scrawny little arms and that wielding a cordless power drill while holding up a bulky piece of pegboard AND the piece of wood behind it equals disaster waiting to happen. The walls even have a brick face on the lower half of the wall which provides a nice brick-wide lip to the wall. Surely, in the amount large amount of crap in this basement, I can find SOMETHING to prop on the bricks and help me stabilize the pegboard...

... Oh you think that? That's adorable. Because it's false.

Again, unnecessary, karma. For reals. And in case you wanted to make my life MORE miserable, I think you should make the screws too long... oh wait, you just did. That's right folks, the screws I had were too big and while I could go into yet another rant about screws (let's all have a moment where we laugh at unfortunately too long/short sexual screws), I'll just tell you DIY lesson number *I lost count*: just take the damn screws into the hardware store and get exactly what you need the first time. Ok, so now we're back, we have the right screws which we are screwing into the wall to form the hole, unscrewing, mounting the back 3/4 board (yes, I did select the word "mounting" to go along with the "screwing"), removing and then mounting the pegboard as the final piecemeal step.

Did that sound tedious to you? Because it was. DIY lesson: find someone who can be paid in food/alcohol/sex/money to get some of the heavy lifting done in a manner that will not piss you off.

 Prepare for this "simple" process to take all day. Oh, I'm sorry, did you have something else you wanted to do today? Yeah... we don't play that here.

Let it be known that by the time I got to the third pegboard, all 6'5' diesel mechanic of my Dad had come home and proceeded to ask me why this was taking all day as I stared at the wall, indignantly. He then lifted the final pieces into place with one hand (not needing my help at all, in fact, I was in the way), used the electric screwdriver (which I had long since abandoned because I'm apparently too special to even remotely use that thing) and zipped the screws in better than I had negotiated all day. In case that didn't want me to punch him in the face bad enough, the screwdriver slipped at one point making a large scratch down into my paint... you know, the spray paint that gets everywhere when you use it and there's no possible "touch up" with. If I wasn't so exhausted, I would have gone on a homicidal Hulk-esque frenzy. Lauren. smash.

BUT THEY ARE UP! So now, I'm cracking open my little kit, all excited to make this pegboard an organized happy place instead of a I-cannot-believe-this-took-all-freaking-day,-I'm-going-to-kill-someone place. I sorted through all the little metal pieces and wished I still had that child-like imagination of "You see a chair? I see a fortress and a camel and a ___!" But no, this hoop to hold a hammer looks like it can hold... a hammer... maybe scissors. OH! I have scissors! *places on wall and sets in a pair of scissors, ecstatic* And this identical hoop can hold... a hammer. Damn. This is why it was critical to note that I did not open this package before finishing the pegboard adventure-- at the bottom of the box, I found a little baggie that contained 4 screws and 4 big bead-looking things measuring about 3/4 in. long. It took me no time to recognize that THESE are the things that you are supposed to mount pegboard with-- buying extra wood and worrying about it lining up and it being the same color as the peg board and blocking holes and etc. are totally unnecessary.

No really karma, not cool.

I also had the brain surge (small miracle considering the blinding rage) that my tedious bunch of punches will not hook onto... hooks.... or really anything for that manner as for my paper cutters and tape runners and scrapbooking tip books. But come Hell or high water, all of my scrapbooking supplies are going on this God-forsaken pegboard. And this is when I realize that I have about a dozen metal baskets from the Container Store that held my extensive DVD collection once upon a time and that they could easily be hung from the wall by hooks, be see-through, and yet sturdy enough to hold an over-abundance of supplies. I took some wire cutters and made small hols towards the top of the containers so that they could be slipped onto the hooks, no problem. Ok, they sit out a little more than I would prefer and they are not beautiful nothing else in this basement is turning out perfectly and it was fo' free (and used up 3 of those baskets which I feel so guilty I spent so much on a while ago and are now going to waste). I also found a stretch mesh bag that I think had Halloween decorations but now hold all my pens. That looks a little too ghetto and will be changed at some point.

I also finally assembled the World Market craft table weighing in at 1 ton that my Mom bought awhile back. I knew I wanted the table to be on casters so I can tuck it away when people are present but also pull it out and turn it to face the TV when I'll be crafting 100 years from now. Thank the good Lord that I had the foresight to add the casters WHILE building this heavy monster (which, no, does not weigh 1 ton but it's particle board made to look fancy with about 20 coats of lacquer). Rotating casters costs a lot more than regular back-and-forth casters but GET THEM. I have a cheap printer cart from Walmart that has 2 stationary casters and 2 rotating ones which render each other USELESS and moving the cart is like trying to predict a lion when you have jerky in your pocket-- either way, this will not end well.

The stool that came with the table is another story where essentially, we were sent 4 identical legs and 2 of them needed their holes in other places. DIY lesson: check inventory of a kit when you buy it (not months later) and before you start to assemble it.

So now that my masterpieces are set, I loaded up the craft cabinets from the spray painting post and they are the best looking and most organized pieces.

Oh, karma, you really didn't need to make this project any more frustrating...

And we had some run-off that is now squirrelled-away in a pie safe in the other room. No, the pie safe was not my furniture of choice but it needed a home and a function in the household so the craft-overload was happy to oblige.

But here's the finished product!

Final DIY lesson: Elementary school teachers are always more than happy to take your 5 boxes of extra craft crap treasure (including a solid 4 superfluous glue guns). So when the stuff doesn't fit into your nice, new, organized craft corner, GIVE IT AWAY, NOW!

... Yea, that just became the Red Hot Chili Peppers rule. You didn't even know that song was about organizing, did you? Learn something new everyday...