I'm Danielle Nicole Enright, Owner & Designer of Abrau Jewelry. I started renovating my 1980's Vermont Victorian/Colonial home with my husband, Daniel Enright, in January of 2022.
Since I started my jewelry business in 2011, I have been working out of my modest dining room on the first floor, right off of the kitchen. I remember, trying to concentrate on looming and stringing tiny beads, when one of my kids would walk into the kitchen, slam the fridge, and I'd jump so high that I'd drop my beads. This happened more times than I can count and let's just say, the frustration was very real.
After growing my business to the point of needing more room for storage, more privacy, and possibly the need to hire help, we started our renovations in January of 2022 with the obvious--a new jewelry studio for mama that also doubles as a craft room for the kids when I'm not working! Woo-hoo!
We DIY'd this room ourselves, creating a space in our otherwise unfinished basement. Lucky for me, my husband was an electrician for the military and he has owned and managed several apartment buildings and he has enough knowledge in building and construction that I felt like I was in very safe and capable hands. Also, we have a daughter (plus two boys) and we're both in agreement that we want to raise our daughter to be more capable than I was growing up (embarrassingly enough, I didn't know how to run a lawnmower until I was divorced in 2016)! Dan has spent a great deal of time training me and I've been so happy to finally learn everything that I can about how to build. Now, I feel so much more comfortable and confident working with all of his tools myself. There are a few things that we both did for the first time together for this room, like building my wrap-around desk, as well as installing LVP flooring (luxury vinyl plank). But, everything we needed to know was found right on YouTube and I'm now starting to make videos on my own channel to share with everyone and hopefully inspire other women and men to DIY.
Here was the basement space we were working with.
Here it is! The final reveal of Abrau Jewelry's new Studio (which also makes for a great craft room). I've now been enjoying this space for the past 10 months and while there are a few things we wished we would've done a little differently, we got our feet wet and we dove right in, creating a studio of my dreams!
Check out the full video reveal on my Instagram page below.
Please stay tuned to this blog as we share what it's like to be DIY'ers--the good, the bad, and the ugly (crying)! We'll also share more details on this jewelry studio / craft room remodel in the next post and I'll link exactly where to get all of the furniture and accessories that I purchased. Renovating has been quite the journey and I'm so happy to be sharing it with all of you!
