Organising the Studio - Papers

It's not that I have been intentionally ignoring you... I've just been busy working (I had a week's temping work and travel to and from work - up to 3 hours a day!!!) and I've been cleaning, rearranging and organising my craft studio in preparation for some upcoming classes and crops.
A couple of weeks ago I managed to pick up a real bargain through an auction website here in New Zealand called TradeMe. You can buy and sell just about anything on there and from time to time I've been known to sell the odd scrap booking product or two myself.
I haven't been on there for a while, not having a great deal of the old folding stuff means you don't really want to look at temptation too much but I went for a nosy just to see what was happening.
Someone had listed some paper racks for sale at a really good price... including a really good "Buy Now" price. The bargain was so good that I bought now.
I contacted the seller and arranged to pick up the one paper rack and somewhere amongst all our correspondence, she mentioned that she had a few paper racks for sale though at the time she had only listed one. I said I would interested in maybe getting a few more from her.
Long story short... I have now ended up with six times the paper displaying/storing capacity I previously had at less than what I paid (wholesale) for the original four racks I had.
The bad news was that I then had to find somewhere to put them all.
After a couple of weeks of deep thought and contemplation I made up my mind what I wanted to do and so over the past week (though mainly this weekend) I've started to rearrange the studio to fit everything in.
I'm not going to show you the before shots quite yet... they will just have to wait until it's all completed and you can see the full effect; but I will show you some part-way through shots as I complete the various areas of the studio.
So here are the paper racks and the cubby unit that they now back onto.

I've created a little paper alcove in the corner by my desk. I wanted somewhere out of the way of the laundry area (reduce the chance of any accidental water damage) and out of the general traffic area as these are just wire racks stacked on top of each other. I have two solid concrete block walls and I have created a third wall by using the back of the cubby unit to provide some support - just in case.
The cubby unit previously housed a huge pile of scrap booking magazines and other scrapping junk that to be honest I had really just forgotten about and totally ignored but it is soon going to gain a new lease of life... coming up in a future blog!!!
I've stacked up all the paper racks and tied them together with cable ties for a little more stability as well, and then rearranged them all this morning before stacking them with paper. That was easier said than done as each wall of racks has to be moved as one due to being cable tied together... yes I admit I should have thought about the design aspects first... but we all learn from our mistakes.
Then once I was happy with their placement (and having added another two stacks to the end of the cubby so all the racks now had a home) I then filled them in with all my cardstock and patterned paper.

The end racks and just a hint of the cubby unit behind and the racks that back onto the cubby unit. The racks to the right are less than a third full, so plenty of room here for more cardstock. (I'm slowly building up my Bazzill holding).

 The racks backed onto the cubby unit and one of the end racks.

The racks underneath the window. I intend to give the window a good clean inside and out and then add a net curtain to reduce any chances of fading. Still a few racks free for more paper!!

And the final racks on the far side of the alcove. At the moment these are full of bargain and discounted papers, so some great deals to be had on these shelves alone!!
My perfectionist self already wants to rearrange all the papers and colour coordinate or do something with them, but I've told myself to behave and just leave them as they are for now. I have a lot more cleaning and rearranging still be done and as they are at least now in paper racks I can live with things as they are for now.
It feels great to be able to cross this off my project list!!