A Place For Things

While flying home to Colorado from a trip in California in January 2011, I was reading a great book about the business of art that I'd been given as a gift.  Reading about possibilities always inspires me, and after a while, I had to stop and write down some ideas.  Along came this idea, sketched in the 4x6" book I carry with me at all times (remember you can click on the photos to see better):

I needed a place for all the clutter on my desk (such as bits of still-usable paper, sewing machine bobbins, colored pencils, ribbon, inspirations, or half-finished paintings) in order to clear up work space.  Many of you know what it usually looks like: piled high with a minimum of 3 projects going on at once.  It seemed that shallow shelves would do it.  Here is what my wall looked like at the time:

I've been working with it like this for as long as I've lived here and it has been perfectly functional, but here were the flaws:

• As stated, no storage space
• It was actually wood paneling that had been painted white.  I actually like the texture of painted wood paneling, but it is very thin and therefore doesn't provide much in the way of insulation in the winter months, something I am always fighting with a portable electric heater
• Behind the lovely piece of orange batik fabric I hung up on the wall was a thousand tiny painted-over pin holes, a souvenir from a previous owner who'd used the wall for his dart board location (you could see the outline of a circle in the pin holes)

So Paul and I got to talking about the project, and he said it shouldn't be too tough, and so he had me draw a more detailed picture, with measurements, which turned out like this:

And then we got to work!  One weeknight Paul pulled off the wood paneling and then a small section of pieced-together sheet rock to reveal this:

The next weekend, after replacing all that insulation with much thicker stuff, we put up two 12-foot lengths of sheet rock, sideways.  This photo shows after we covered up the seams and screws with mortar.

The fun part: picking a color!  This is called Polliwog.

In went the first, foundational shelves:

Slowly but surely, the smaller ones were added:

And now, after a week of sorting things and cleaning and vacuuming and moving the furniture back, they are COMPLETE!!

Isn't it a dream?