Craft Room Workstation Tutorial

3 Materials
$87
4 Days
Medium

Hey there! Welcome to Decorate and More with Tip! Here on my blog I share how you can decorate your home on a budget. I share budget friendly decorations by creating it from scratch, revamping, re-purposing or giving it a makeover with easy tutorials. I hope I inspire you to create something beautiful for your home. :)

Today I am sharing how we created my workstation! Building vs purchasing one saved us more than half the cost.This is the most important station in my room. The craft room is on the small size only 11' x 12' remember I have all the walls with different stations. So that being said, to get my work stations in the center of the room I had to compromise the size. My workstation was one that had to go a bit smaller than I originally planned. I wanted a large squared table with two 9 cubical book shelving units for the pedestals. The size of the table I planned for didn't fit the space so I scaled it down to smaller shelving units. Nothing really goes as smoothly as it does on paper, right?  The measurements we decided the table should be and to give me enough work space and space to move around the room should be 28" x 58" and I wanted it to be 36" tall.Just a few more touches and my craft room will be complete. To follow my progress, you can go review previous craft room blogs here → CRAFT ROOM.

MY WORKSTATION TUTORIAL


MY WORKSTATION TUTORIALNow that we have the measurements it's time to create my table. I purchased two 5 cube shelving units instead of the basic 9 cube units. I looked at several craft workstations for inspiration. Most of the ones I saw had 9 cube units, I like the looks of the shelving units so I went down to a 5 cube unit.

It took me about 30 minutes to put one unit together. The only tools I had to use were a Phillip screw driver and a hammer. I followed the instructions it came with, which I have to say were very easy to follow.

To raise the table to the height I needed I added 4 furniture legs to the bottom of both units.

I have my base done, the next part I needed Mr. Tip's help.  To make the top of the table, we are using MDF, we purchased at Home Depot. We had Home Depot cut to the size we needed for the table top.  I went out into our shed and grabbed two 2 x 4s to build the foundation for the table. Took the measurements we needed, cut the 2x4s to size. We laid the 2 x 4s onto the units, predrilled the holes and attached the form together with wood screws.

I wanted one side of my table to be longer than the shelving unit. I'll show you why in a minute.

Once the foundation was all attached together we took the piece of MDF laid it on the floor and place the 2x4 foundation base on top. We predrilled holes and attached the two together with wood screws.

I lost the photos of how we attached the shelving units to the top. :( Here are the steps we took. We flipped the shelving units over and attached them to the table top with wood screws. We predrilled holes inside the top shelf so the screws would be hidden.

Here is why I wanted the table top to hang a little bit over on one side.

On my workstation I wanted to protect my table top when I am painting. I added a roll of plastic under the ledge. I used heavy duty screw hooks and a large wooden dowel rod to place my roll of plastic on.

I purchased a large roll of plastic table covering, cut the roll to fit nicely inside the hooks. The size I needed was an unusual size so I purchased a normal size roll and cut the piece to fit my space.

I added my roll of plastic to the dowel rod and placed it into the hooks.

Another issue I wanted to address was keeping the plastic table topping from moving all over my workspace. Here is what I came up with to solve the issue, I took two old yard sticks, we have several of them for some reason, I cut both to size, drilled a hole at each end of the yard stick and placed them on my table with wood screws. I can push the plastic underneath the yard stick to keep the plastic in place.

I painted with my normal routine, using Benjamin Moore Advance, Chantilly Lace. It took a couple coats.Another issue I had was the exposed 2x4 on each side of my table. I wasn't happy with the sides at all. To fix the problem, I made two false panels from left over underlayment I had from my paper organizer project. I placed a drawer handle in the center of each panel to make it look like one drawer using a nail gun I attached the panels to each side of my table.

I like the look a lot better with the false drawers, don't you?

For handy clean up I added a hook to one of the shelving units to hold a hand held broom and dust pan. I placed my trash bin close to sweep my mess up after I am finished with a project.

I purchased a white wooden saddle stool on Amazon for me to sit on while working on a project. It will be easy to wipe down after my projects. Easy clean up!

For full version it's up on my blog.

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4 of 16 comments
  • Melin Melin on Jul 19, 2020

    Wow! This is so ingenious and functional ~ an ideal island workstation! And it blends so nicely with the other workstations in your craft room. This craft room is truly a creative oasis ~ what fun!!


    Thank you very much for the ideas and inspiration, and for sharing!

    • Melin I wanted to have everything I would need or at least try to on my station that I will be doing most of my projects on. One way to get it the way I wanted was to do it myself. Took a little time but so worth it!

      Thank you!

  • K. Ross K. Ross on Jul 20, 2020

    I love this idea for my grandkids playroom. Use white roll paper, cut on either side place small pails for crayons, markers ect. It would be great for holiday packages that need wrapping. There is so many options, thanks for the inspiration

    • Thank you. I love to inspire. I got my inspiration for being at the doctors. The examing table is set up with paper. Crazy how we get inspired isn't it? ha!

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