Well, this project actually came to a semi-conclusion over a month ago (or more!) but I’ve been lax on my posting. Bad Carrie.
You might remember the awesome plans I posted based on an article in Family Handyman. Well, we went ahead and built it! It looks pretty sweet if we do say so ourselves:
The best part is that the shelves are adjustable. I underestimated the number of shelves that would work (I have a lot of small stuff!) so I think eventually we need to cut 3 or 4 more shelves. But, this is pretty much the state that it’s in now, besides the closet now having its doors attached (yay!) and a lot more stuff shoved in there.
The room is still in progress, but it’s getting close. I got a second desk that I’ve been wanting from Ikea, and we’re planning on hanging the pegboard up above the desk tomorrow. Other than maybe hanging another shelf and some decorative items, that should conclude the craft room (for now at least!). Who knows when I’ll post the “final” pictures, so here are a few more in-progress photos.
Here’s the desk I already had. This will become the laptop/silhouette cutting station. I made the curtains in the background! Oh yes. 
I started sorting my small embellishments into color jars, in Stacy Julian’s style. (She’s a scrapbooking “guru” to those of you that don’t already know.. haha). I realized I have very little purple stuff. Which makes sense, since I almost never use purple on my pages either. I guess I don’t make many girly looking pages – that’s why I have to have a really girly room. haha
I have to say, so far the color jars really have come in handy. It makes a lot more sense (in the embellishment phase especially!) to say, Oh, It would be nice to have a flower here and then figure out which color flower you want instead of digging through 8 million tiny packets of flowers. Yes. So, so far I recommend this organization method. The jars came from Oak’s family’s basement (the land of many mysterious treasures), and hopefully they can bring me some more of them so I can sort the neutral colors out some more. That’s by far the most “full” jar. But, it looks cute and that is happiness!
So, I haven’t been too good with the updates but we’re making progress. We discovered this winter that we were lacking a closet near the side entry from the garage. We hung some hooks up on the wall of the hallway but the coats ended up sticking out and were generally a nuisance.
Then I had a glorious idea. We could build a closet into the garage! I remembered that one of Oak’s coworkers made a closet into a mini mudroom – that is, they turned the closet into a spot where you could sit down and change your shoes, and had hooks and shelves to hang clothes and put mail, etc. Great idea.
Well the idea of a closet kind of turned into a “bump out”, a little room that comes off the hallway. I collected a bunch of ideas here:
http://delicious.com/carrievision/entrycloset
Then when Oak’s family came to visit the demolition began. I wasn’t really expecting it to happen so soon but given the fact that we are planning on changing the flooring, it made sense to do at this stage of the renovation process.
So, we’ve been working on this on and off along with all the other house projects (unpacking upstairs, etc). There are only a few more things we are planning to do before putting the flooring in – some painting basically. This area will be tiled along with the laundry and bathrooms that are across the hallway.
For pictures with all of the progress so far, check this out: Mini mudroom progress.
This post has a soundtrack, if you’d like something to listen to:
We were at Ikea over the weekend, browsing, sitting on the Ektorp couch, playing with kitchen cabinets, eating 50 cent hot dogs… etc. etc. Does this place EVER get old? Not really. Sure, I’ve realized that some of their stuff is of questionable quality over the years (don’t expect your Lack table to survive more than a couple moves without some of the veneer chipping off.. lol), but it is still one of my favorite stores. Now that it’s fairly close by (well, convenient to family!) it’s lost some of its excitement factor for me, but that just means we can get MORE stuff there. Ding!
The Poang is one of those iconic pieces of Ikea furniture. Whoever doesn’t own one, at least knows someone that does. We have one with a green microfiber cover that has lasted us about 6 years so far. It’s awesome. Ready to brush right past that section following the ever-so-convenient arrows to the Billy Bookcases, having already owned said Poang, I managed to spot this beauty out of the corner of my eye:
A Poang cushion with OAK LEAVES AND ACORNS! Are they freaking kidding me??! Have the Ikea marketing people bored a hole into my brain and extracted my idea for an Oak-themed motifa? Seriously. However, at the current juncture, we cannot justify $100 for new cushions when we a) already have Poang cushions and b) could spend $100 on many other home improvement projects.. like window coverings for example, so Oak can walk around without pants on (which, it seems, is every man’s house goal..). Actually, it’s a miracle if we get out of a home improvement store visit spending UNDER that amount, and I’m like dude all we bought was random hardware items.. What the heck, seriously??
We decided instead that we would look in the fabric section – in hopes that they would have this fabric in stock so I could make something else out out of it. No such luck, but we did find an organic patterned fabric in some more muted colors that I bought a yard of for our half bathroom on the first floor. Now I have an inspiration piece! But, this cushion will haunt my dreams until I find some way to buy it for ten dollars. Any ideas?
I know. I owe the world an upstairs house tour. Let me start off by saying – most of the rooms still look like a room with a pile of crap in the middle. Hopefully that will continue to get better as we get all the shelves installed in the closets and we can put stuff away. Now that the mini mudroom is enclosed from the outside at least, we no longer have a semi-urgent indoor-outdoor living situation. (OK it was really an indoor-garage living situation, but you get the idea).
I promise, promise as soon as we get some rooms semi-photo worthy, I’ll post pictures. For now, you can enjoy this lovely picture that Oak took of me during the Hell Week of Paint and Drywall. After rescheduling the carpet installation a few times, we decided we are going to get it DONE dammit! So we went at it hardcore. So hardcore we basically had to work on drywall and painting every day night for about 10 nights straight… No leisurely dinners after work, you chow down on Chinese or fast food or takeout (cooking takes too long!) and get a solid 6 hours of work in before bed at least! According to Oak’s uber project manager skills, it was possible. So we hoped.
When we were nearing the end, I was nearly losing it while painting the trim. So much, did I care that Oak took a picture of me with a huge piece of tape on my butt? Not Really. I didn’t even know that tape was there until he informed me AFTER he took the picture.
And uh yeah, the time stamp of this photo is at 3:48 am. On a work night.
I love the bonus room now, but .. when you’re trying to drywall and paint it, it’s a HUGE ass room! There are 7 windows alone!
We used to make fun of that “Renovation realities” show where people take on too much in too short a period. I have a feeling we could have been on that show with this project, though I don’t think their cameras appreciate giant drywall dust clouds.
And in case you were wondering, no, the hardcore-ness is not a sustainable practice. We still do SOME stuff during the week but we’re mostly just hardcore on the weekends now. Like the 27 doors I am still working on painting.. I’m about 2/3 of the way done.. Then we have to rehang all of them — lol!
Because playing on the computer is oh-so-much more productive than doing actual housework, I decided to try out the capabilities of Google Sketchup. I had heard of sketchup through the awesome blog Knock-off Wood and Oak’s Family Handyman magazine. Let’s just say it’s a nerd-tastic program. If you were an engineering major, it probably would be like second nature, or something. (There are axes! Are you baffled yet?) I kind of figured out some of its basic functionality based on this handy tutorial.
It *could* be a lot flexible in its operations — you can’t change the dimensions of an object after you draw it (as far as I can tell), so my Adobe Illustrator-oriented mind had a hard time grasping it. However, I caught on enough to come up with a 3-D model of the shelving that I want for the inside of the craft room closet:
Groovy eh? I can’t tell you how useful this model is for actually building the project because we haven’t even started to attempt to build it yet. Like.. how do you know what the dimensions of all of the pieces are?? You can’t click an object and find that out.. there’s a little ruler tool you can use to measure things. What a pain!
I did draw it out on paper and figured out all the dimensions ahead of time – you get one chance to put in dimensions before the object is drawn forever. I really don’t see how you could do anything free-form with this program (maybe someone else knows better? I could watch some more tutorials.. lol)
My idea with the extra space at the bottom of the right hand side shelves is that I can put the wrapping paper and other tall items in there with the piece of wood on the front to “corral it in.” The heights of the middle shelves are adjustable because I want to use shelving standards. We shall see.
Oh, and I want a shelf that goes across the top but I got frustrated with trying to draw one and gave up.
Now it’s time to develop my non-existent woodworking skills… stay tuned.
We’ve been meaning to make the drive out to Angier, NC and all of the nurseries out there. It’s well known as having great bargains on trees, bushes, and other perennial plants – many of these farms are the suppliers of plants for the local big box stores. With Oaks family visiting (with big truck!) we figured it was a perfect opportunity to get some flowering trees for the yard.
Well, it definitely did NOT disappoint. This time, we only made it to McLamb nursery – they had a ton of stuff but next time we’ll do some more venturing. We got quite a haul of stuff at probably 1/3 of what it would have cost at a local nursery (that doesn’t say our ending bill wasn’t large. Plants sure add up quickly!). However, we were able to get some nice big specimens that have spruced up the front yard considerably. Here are some photos from the day:
Redbud trees galore! Here, they are a native plant and bloom in late March/early April. We bought one and also moved one that was growing too close to the house to a better location.. hopefully it survives.
Considering the perfect specimen…
Crape myrtles galore! I call these the “lilacs of the south” as the flowering is similar, but they come in purple, white, and raspberry and bloom for the entire summer! Love them!
Skye enjoyed cooling off in the automatic sprinkler system:
Our reward to ourselves after the major milestone of the carpet installation was a trip. We went on a Carribbean cruise, and it was EXACTLY what we needed after the extremely exhausting few weeks we had leading into the carpet installation.
We’re slowly getting back into the swing of “normal life” and starting in the setting up of the upstairs rooms. Exciting! However, the vacation took our camera as a victim by the way of a “waterproof bag” that turned out not to be “waterproof.” D’oh. As soon as we get that little broken camera situation resolved, I’ll be back with more updates! Boo!
One of the things we considered our first major milestone in the home reno, the upstairs carpet, was installed last Friday! Woohoo! Sure, I got painters wrist in the process, but we got it donezo! Here we are enjoying our new carpet.. haha
Here’s Oak scraping off the popcorn in the almost-last popcorny-room upstairs.
This is in the last bedroom with popcorn. (We have a “not-thinking-about-it-now room that still has it – our master bathroom. BOOO. But it doesn’t have carpet, so as far as we’re concerned it doesn’t exist at the moment)
Many milestones achieved this weekend:
- Our contractor came and installed the new subflooring in the gray bedroom and hallway.
- Put first coat on trim in gray bedroom.
- Re-hung fan in gray bedroom (Thanks Dave!)
- Oak finished mudding and sanding the aforementioned “last bedroom”
- We spent like 3-4 hours cleaning all the drywall dust off the floors of the bonus room on Friday night (yay! engulfed in a dust cloud!). However, we did learn the running the vaccuum in “wet mode” by putting some water in the bottom of the canister allows the suction to stay MUCH longer than using the filter, with the same amount of exhaust dust. NICE shop vac tip there!!
- Washed all the bonus room walls with Murphy’s oil soap, which I’m convinced I am semi-allergic to, due to the minor rash I get from it EVEN WHEN I WEAR GLOVES! What the heck. Too bad this stuff works so well and smells nice.
- Primed the walls and ceiling of the bonus room. Thanks Dave!
- Cleaned drywall dust off many hardware pieces, like all the switchplates, and the ceiling fans and other light fixtures that need to be re-installed. Thanks mom!
- Painted the ceiling in the bonus room with our favorite Glidden color-changing paint.
- Put wood putty on trim in bonus & “last bedroom.”
- Murphy’s oil soap fun in “last bedroom.”
- Primer coat on walls, ceiling, and trim of “last bedroom.”
Hm. No wonder I am tired. haha. This will probably be the last post I make before carpet. We’re down to crunch time, folks..
I’m back with an update on the basement bedroom. It’s been “done” for at least a few weeks now, but I finally got down there to take a few pictures. Half the issue is that we haven’t re-hung a light fixture in there yet, so I can’t snap a picture of darkness!
The paint was (once again!) found in the “oops” section at Home Depot. This is actually some Behr kitchen and bath paint (fancy!). I figured the light blue would lighten up the basement space. I had considered using the gray that I used in the upstairs bedroom down there, then I figured that’s just too much gray for a basement.
Here’s the closet. It’s totally a weird color – another oops paint.. It looked more beige in the store. Oh well, the white doors will go back on eventually! I’m pretty sure whatever is living in the closet doesn’t care what color it is. Whatevs! haha.
I don’t have too many plans in this room besides hanging a curtain and using the awesome $12 bedspread I got at Tarjay. I’m hoping when we go through all our stuff i’ll miraculously find some appropriate wall hangings for this room. Fingers crossed!
