Industrial Shelving Update

We’ve been busy with several house projects, all in various stages  but none of which are complete.  Part of the problem is that I like to wait and see what comes along in terms of accessories and furniture.  I love thrifting and yard saling, rather than buying new, but it does take awhile to find what I have in mind.  So rather than continue to wait for these projects to be completely finished, I decided to share some “almost finished” photos of our loft area.

When we built this house two years ago, the upstairs laid out in such a way that we gained a bonus space which we refer to as the loft.  It is situated outside of my three children’s bedrooms and measures about 10 x 10.  The space has a vaulted ceiling and a railing that looks down upon the foyer.

Ever since we moved in, this space  has been the dumping ground for paperwork, photos, school projects … basically everything paper. Here are some “very real” before photos:

I wanted to use this space as a hangout area for my teens as well as an organized repository for our personal files, mailing supplies for my daughter’s Ebay business and my Etsy store, photo storage and gift wrapping supplies.

The jumping off point was shelving.  I was intrigued by these DIY industrial shelving pics.

 This one is from BeneathMyHeart.com:

And this one is from abeautifulmess.com

Both of these women have great tutorials on how to build these shelves so I’ve provided links to their blogs.

In our planning, we knew we needed to incorporate a place for our printer.  Also, the location of the studs dictated that our sections would be about 16 inches wide.  The worst part of the project was removing all of the stickers from each individual piece of pipe.  This actually worked out to be a great project for my mother!

Once the shelving unit was done, I brought out my collection of suitcases and baskets to house the various supplies – one suitcase is just for ribbon and tags, another for tissue paper.etc.

I also incorporated some of my daughters’ ceramic projects and drawings, along with my collection of vintage Reader’s Digest books for color.

Along the bottom, I used these square crates from Walmart.com to organize gift bags and mailing and filing supplies.  I stained them dark walnut so they would  blend in with the shelves.

The industrial shelving serves as the primary organizational area for this space.  We also included my dad’s oak file cabinet.

My dad was an engineer  – very organized and also very frugal.   I love the way he replaced one of the missing handles with a mismatched one.  My parents were auction lovers and rarely bought anything new so I am sure this cabinet was one of their auction finds.  I increased the functionality of the cabinet by purchasing wire frames  from OfficeDepot.com that fit nicely in each drawer and allow me to use hanging file folders.  The cabinet still has the familiar creak when I pull open a drawer …which always reminds me of Dad.

We placed a small sofa that we already had in this space, although  I would like to replace it with a sleeper in the future.  The bamboo shade is from Walmart.com.  The rug is a sisal that we had purchased from Pottery Barn for our previous house.  And the trunk/coffee table is a piece that we’ve had forever.

I would like to add a  bohemian vibe to the space by changing out the pillow on the sofa (for now it is a pillow form wrapped in a blanket) and bringing in a few low maintenance plants (maybe a macrame plant hanger).  I would also like to  find either a mid century chair or a rattan chair for this empty corner:

So more to come on this project but so far so good.   It feels great to finally have this space organized!