humphing

I spent this morning carrying my entire craft book collection upstairs in installments.  Fortunately my dad was on hand last night to assist Graham with the humphing of the bookcase...

..and also my haberdasher's counter, which is quite possibly the heaviest thing known to man.  I can't believe Graham and I managed to carry it up a hill when I found it, albeit two steps at a time interspersed with 30-second periods of recovery.  I would never attempt to move it now I know about my heart, that is for sure.

This, which is currently a corner of our bedroom, is going to become my craft space.  The only item of furniture I'm going to have aside from these shelves and drawers is a desk.  You'd think that would be fairly easy to arrange, but I am struggling.  This is partly because there's still a hulking great wardrobe in my so-called craft space, so I can't try anything out.  It should be moved shortly.  It's also because I don't yet have the desk and don't really know what its dimensions will be.  I thought I'd wait and buy one specifically to fit with my plans/layout.  There's also still a fair bit of "stuff" that needs to be moved upstairs and rehoused amongst these items of furniture.  But I think the main problem is the haberdasher's counter.  I have always wanted one and couldn't believe my luck when I found it and, don't get me wrong, it houses an amazing amount of storage space, even in its current condition with some drawers missing or in need of repair.  But it is massive and unwieldy and is something that really needs to be in the middle of a room, viewed from all sides, to be fully appreciated.  Could I bring myself to put it with its glass front against a wall?  It might make better use of the limited space I have, but it does do a disservice to this lovely item?  Hmmm.  Maybe I'll feel differently about it protruding into the middle of the room (not quite as much as it is now!) once it has its glass top back on (I need to stick on some felt or foamy type stuff first) and once it has all its drawers.  I'm hoping my uncle, a joiner, will be able to make replacements for those that are missing.  It's a great piece of furniture in so many ways, but having never had the right space for it, I've lost count of the number of times I've secretly wished I hadn't found it that day.  I do hope I feel differently once it's found its home and been properly finished.  I know I SHOULD love it.

I'm hoping I can make this little space amazing, but I'm not feeling overly confident.  Yet.  Well, however it looks, I can't wait to have my crafty stuff accessible once again.  My real design aim is to be able to make use of snatched moments to actually make stuff.  Can you imagine?  

I wish I could explain how horrifically undoable our life is with the flat in its current state.  We could just about get away with it before Dulcie, but now it feels like we're living in an ever-moving eye of a hurricane, frantically reorganising the piles of crap plus good stuff that get blown and reblown umpteen times a day.  Every little thing we try to do is twenty times more faffy than it should be and it makes us irritable and stressed and inefficient and unfulfilled.  My main focus in all this reorganising and rearranging is storage.  Storage, storage, storage.  I've become quite obsessed with it.  I was out with a friend a couple of weeks ago and we were fantasising about winning the lottery and all I could think of was what storage solutions I'd spend my winnings on.  I'm sure I'll always be an on-the-back-foot disorganised individual with hoarder tendencies, but I'm really hoping (and excited at the thought) that what we do to the flat now will actually change our lives and change the ways we live and feel.  I hope I won't be disappointed...