A Finished Project

I swear nothing gives me more pleasure and satisfaction then finishing a "long time coming" project, whether that be one of our home projects, or in the yard or even a craft project.

The husband installed the closet system over the Labor Day holiday weekend and it's a good thing we had the extra time because as I started bringing clothes back in the closet, I think we ended up re-configuring things at least three times, but finally found what is going to work well for us.

 

Taking the door off was the right thing to do.  Makes it way more spacious than it is.  Like I said in my last post, it's only 6' deep and 7' across which is small for a master closet.....both the closet and the master bathroom in this house were disappointing to me, but coming from a two bedroom, one bath bungalow, they weren't deal breakers, the other storage in this home more than made up for the master's shortcomings.

Of course, my stuff takes up 3/4 of the closet and my husband gets the rest but that works because his current job's dress code is t-shirts and jeans, so his casual polo type shirts are only worn when we go out to the movies, or out to eat, etc.   Even so, they are much more accessible and his shoes are underneath his shirts.  We also have a spot for the basket that has our shoe cleaning/waterproofing supplies in it.

While my stuff was out of the closet, I did another purge and pared it down some more, some went to my sister, the rest will be donated.  In another month, I'll be switching out seasonal clothing

In the meantime, I pulled all my black, white, and gray colored clothing from the rest and using the new space in the back of the closet where the built in was, put my white on the lower rod and the gray on the upper along with the small amount of purple I have.  We even have room to store my yoga mat (I do yoga in our bedroom) and our down comforter we use in the winter on the shelf between the clothes.

The rest was organized by ROYGBIV as best I could.  All my black and black prints are hung on the bottom rod along with pants and capri pants and I hung some of my Hawkeye gear to the front of the top rod.

Over on the top shelf of the husband's side of the closet, I have canvas storage bins with my boots, seasonal shoes, totes & small bags, and swimwear stored.

One the top shelf of my side of the closet, I store my gym bag, a basket of hangar clips, my blue felt fedora and purses.......my precious.  😀

My purses....sigh, I needed a way that I could see what I had.  Before the re-do, they hung on large S hooks on the lower rod of the husband's side, but the closet door swung in to the closet and was usually open, so quite a few of them were hidden from sight unless I stepped in the closet and shut the door.

Now, they are all out for me to see!

The two drawer unit we installed holds my undies and bras and the wire basket holds my various pajamas.  Of course, I had to give my Iowa Hawkeye purse the love and recognition it deserves.  

I needed a way to get some of the purse to stand up better rather than flopping over.  No way was I spending the money for purse shapers, they are expensive!

I have the satin bags that the Michael Kors came in but you can't see them if you store the purses in the bags, so they are folded away for safe keeping.  I didn't want to use tissue paper and my first thought was pool noodles!.....I could cut them up and stuff them in the purses, but unfortunately I couldn't find any pool noodles this late in summer so as I was wandering my local dollar store, I saw children's water wings, swim arms, whatever for $1 a pair and BINGO, the light bulb goes off and I think I'll blow those up and stuff them in the purses....

They worked perfect and it only cost me $8 bucks!

I also found this cool purse hanging gizmo on Amazon and I hung more of my purses on that.  I have a lot of purses, but I use them and like to switch them out frequently.

All and all, I'm really pleased with the makeover of the closet and wish we would have done it much sooner than we did, especially when I was still working, but hey, we can enjoy it now.  The husband even thinks it was a good idea now that it's done.  

Thanks for stopping by and letting me tell you all about our DIY home projects or décor!

Back to the Land of Living

Not going to sugar coat it....I've felt like crap the last couple of weeks.  Not only dealing with an elbow/arm/hand issue but the much loved young adult in the house decided to share his upper respiratory crap with me a couple of weeks ago and it kicked my butt!  My energy level has been non existent....I've had just enough energy to do my college class work, keep the house in order and cook some semblance of dinner for the family, everything else got pushed aside.

So, I've been neglectful of my blog and I'm getting to get myself back on some type of schedule, not just with my blog but with my life.  :)

I have lots of things on the horizon to manage.  My husband is leaving next week to visit his ailing mother in North Carolina and the young adult and I are staying home because of college and work (young adult).  I'm visiting some old friends next month in Houston and before I leave, I would really like to have our master bathroom re-do almost done but with my college class wrapping up and a final project due also besides the final exam before I leave, I not sure if it's possible.

As much as I want to completely rip out our master bathroom and re-do it, we can't afford to, so I'm going to just update...it's been 10 years since I painted and the floor has taken a beating also.

The re-do consists of:

• Completely repainting bathroom
• Framing both wall mirrors over the vanities
• New flooring
• New light fixtures
• New faucets
• and maybe painting the vanities

I'd like to get the painting done while the husband is gone and won't be using the room so that's how I'm going to approach it.....baby steps....

One thing I'm super excited about that is happening next week is the custom cabinet pull outs that I ordered for the base cabinet in our kitchen that houses our pots and pans.  I came across this local company EZ-Gliders at the Home & Garden show I went to in February and I had them come out and take a look and give me a quote.   It's not a cheap enhancement, but for us it's worth it because it's the one cabinet we are in and out of the most of all and it's not awful trying to find what you want.  We even tried a cheap wire pull out for pots and a wire coated plate rack to stand pans in but it's not working for us anymore.

I'm also contemplating tile choices right now for our fireplace surround.  It's the most ugly boring beige tile you have ever seen and it's crying for a make-over also.  :)

AND in addition to all that....I have our everything on our deck in disarray while I'm repainting and freshening up some things...too many things....how in the hell did I ever work 44 hours a week?

So....stay tuned....lots to share.....hopefully I'm over the hump with this creepy crud I have and I'm ready for spring, house projects, gardening and some outings! 

~**Let's talk bathrooms Part 1**~

Shall we?  We have 4.5 of them....yep....4.5 for three people....it seems a little overkill for us, but to be honest, two of them are rarely used.  The full bath off of my craft room is rarely used and our upstairs guest bathroom is only used when we have company.  The young adult in the house has his own full bath off his bedroom, we have our master bath and there is a 1/2 bath on the main floor for guests.

Lately I've been busy re-painting and updating two of them and I'm getting ready to start to re-do our master bath.   Our upstairs guest bathroom has never been painted and was still the Sherwin Williams Dover White the contractor had chosen and it was time to give it a fresh coat of paint and the downstairs bathroom was in desperate need of updating......what was I thinking when I did it 11 years ago? 

Here the full bath off my craft room that I did 10 years ago, but it still makes me smile, it all still looks good, it pays homage to animals and I still love it all these years later, so I'm leaving it alone.

 

 

Hanging above the toilet is one of the cross stitch samplers that my mother made me years ago and I just treasure it.  Here's a close up.......isn't it precious?  and the perfect gift for this cat loving family.

 

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The first bathroom I painted and decorated was the main floor 1/2 bath.  It's the bathroom most used by us and our guests and it's the smallest, so I started there......well, let me tell you, my taste has definitely changed in the 11 years since I did it....

Here's a picture of the awful wallpaper we took down.  We also had a cheap over the toilet cabinet that came with us from our first house that we got rid of and mounted a wall cabinet.

I decided to leave the wood wainscoting but no more wallpaper!

I also had to do something with the awful brass fixtures that were in the room, so my handy dandy spouse switched out the faucet, towel holder and tissue paper holder to an updated oiled bronze finish and I spray painted the light fixture an oiled bronze because I didn't mind the style just the finish and I didn't really see one that grabbed me enough to spend the money on it....beside why buy, if you can repurpose?

Sherwin Williams "Beach House" is the paint I used for most of the wall color (I've also used that color in our den, foyer, hallway and staircase walls) and on the bottom part of the wainscoted wall I used Valspar's "Green Goddess".  I also applied a bronze rub-on detail to the front of the pedestal sink.

 



I found the following picture at Kirkland's and the green in the picture played well with the green that that I chose for the bottom part of the wall.

The green on the wall in this photo appears much brighter than it actually is......it looks downright hideous here.  :)

 

The metal sign above the toilet can mean many things.  :)

 

Lastly, we replaced the cheap hollow core door with a 6 panel sold wood door (which we are slowly doing throughout our house). 

 

Thanks for stopping by and letting me share one of the projects I've been working on.  As I said earlier, our upstairs guest bathroom has never been painting and I just recently finished that project and I'm gearing up to re-do our master bath that hasn't been painted in since 2005.  Both rooms are in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint.

Stay tuned and I'll share those project with you when I'm finished!

Den/Library Re-Do

When we found this house ten years ago, the first thing we said when we saw the front dining room space was "that will be our den/library".  We don't formally entertain so a formal dining room didn't suit our needs.  We have a big eat in area in our large kitchen and most of time when we do entertain family and/or friends, it's either buffet style, out on our deck or we are eating in front of the television while watching some sporting event....Go Hawkeyes!  :)

This was the first room that I painted and at the time I wanted it warm and cozy so I went with a Sherwin Williams paint in their Soft Suede line of paints in the color Chianti.  The finished walls look like suede and the application wasn't hard at all.  I had it done in a weekend.  It's had to be touched up over the years and I finally ran out of the paint and then Sherwin Williams discontinued the line, so I knew I was eventually going to have to re-paint it something else.

See that small slipper chair in the room?.....it serves as a cat scratching post.......

These picture were taken not long before I re-painted.  The suede paint was finally looking pretty tired and it was time for a change.  Since painting it with the suede paint, we had purchased the black bookcases and computer station,  re-carpeted and moved Connor's computer desk to his room.  I also refinished an antique dresser that I found on Craigslist to use as a printer stand/storage in the room.

This is what the room looks like now painted in "Beach House" by Sherwin Williams.....I think it brightened up the room quite a bit.   I also sprung for some new cellular shades for the bay window as the old ones had seen better days.

The room also is where we hang some of our art and where part of our permanent book collection resides.  There are P. Buckley Moss and Charles Wysocki on the walls and even a Terry Redlin that was my mother's that brings back memories every time I look at it.

Slipper chair/cat post is still there. :)

 

 

Thanks for stopping by and seeing how I spend some of my time.......

Stay tuned for more.