Clever Craft Room
Small Space, Big Impact
Kay Holley’s basement is small, but her resourcefulness and creativity more than compensate.
At the Boyne City home she and husband, Stuart, have owned since 1978, Holley has transformed the dark and cramped basement like an artist does a blank easel. The brightest colors, fabrics, ribbons and rugs have come together to create a whimsical craft area that offers inspiration for breathing new life into old spaces.
A former East Jordan Middle School English teacher, Holley has been plugging away at brightening the lower floor with her quirky touches since retiring in 2005. (She said she finds many of her more eccentric accents at Cindi Franco’s Cool Stuff in Boyne City.)
It started as an effort to create a more enticing space to get on her treadmill every day; now it’s a spot she actually enjoys, with a spacious craft table for putzing and painting candlesticks and rocks for gardens and taking on projects with her grandsons, Alex and Tyler, when they come to visit.
Ideas to borrow: Colorful shower curtains tied with ribbons hide the furnace; polka dots and bright paint enliven the shelves of “stuff” that we all have at home; mismatched rugs are charmingly coordinated; and along the wood-beamed ceiling, one side is painted blue, and facing the other direction the slats will be orange once she’s finished.
Family mementos are hung with abandon everywhere, making disorganized look surprisingly planned, like a messy but trendy hair style or a splatter painting in an otherwise staid museum.
“It’s just a collection of all my stuff down here,” Holley says. “I wanted a nice place to have it all around me.”
