Closet Organization: They Don't Call It Labor Day fer Nuthin

I've had a vision that plagues me, every night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up. A vision of a closet that's not full of stupidly wasted space. Instead, this is what I see:

It drove me nuts. UNTIL. I woke up last Saturday morning and decided this was the day. I'd been hatching a plan for better using the space in the closet, with its one dumb pole and skinny shelf that was making my leather bags droop.

As closets go, it's not that bad for its era (predating the master suite with walk-in, unfortunately for me and my herd of Coach, Minkoff and Rowley). It fits most of what we need to stuff into a closet, and I have an extra closet in my office that is a walk-in for overflow and formal clothes we don't use very often. There's also a row of cabinets (pictured below), in which we store out-of-season clothes--basically an entire wall of storage. But still, I hate wasted space, so I assembled my team:

• Super Wonderbar
• Hammer
• Ear muffs
• Assorted painting supplies
• Drill
• Faux Dremel Multimax (from Harbor Freight)

And went to work on the closet. Demo was pretty simple...

Although removing the two-inch nails that secured the shelf support to the wall left a number of these. Love working on a house with plaster walls. I wasn't anticipating having to spackle a bunch of holes...

...before glooping on a couple coats of paint to cover the unpainted strip the shelf support was concealing. Oh well. I managed to get two coats of paint on thick enough that I didn't need to do more, using perhaps the worst painting technique I have ever executed. (For those late to the game, this room took tinted primer plus four coats of blue for the mesmerizing cobalt you see here.) It involved a hack saw, a mini roller and the paint can. No tray. I'll let you wonder about that one.

Anyway. The weekend was a blur of touchup paint, rather unsuccessfully priming and painting the melamine panel that now divides the shelving from the poles (stupid primer said no sanding, but I should have known better than to believe it), LOTS of measuring repeatedly and an equal amount of leveling and adjusting.

Most of the materials used are from Lowe's, HD and Builder's Bargain, the motto of which I have mentioned before: "B-grade building materials may not meet code." How could you not love a place with that kind of winning marketing? However, four pieces of material were from somewhere much more interesting. The shelves were, in a former life, our kitchen cabinet doors. They had a lot going for them in terms of shelving.

• already painted
• flat and not warped, and already acclimated to the house so shouldn't warp in the future
• kitchen to be demoed soon anyway
• removing doors makes things a lot easier to find in kitchen
• very sturdy (3/4"-thick plywood)
• FREE.

It took me most of the weekend on and off, but we now have a closet that makes maximum use of the space and features mostly level shelving and poles. (The top pole slopes down to the left.) There's even extra space for hanging bulky stuff like hoodies that we'd both wadded up and stuffed in our dressers.

Now I can enjoy my pre-sleep and coming-to moments in peace, instead of being jarred by an unthoughtfully designed closet.

Next in the crosshairs: that alcove above Todd's built-in dresser. The only thing I've done to it is removed the wallpaper, and it's looked really pretty crummy since I did that four and a half years ago. Also, curtains or doors or something. Probably curtains.

What's New, Part II

Since there was plenty of light to still take some decent pictures, this is a much better update. Starting downstairs, with the dining room... I'm thrilled that the dining room table is finally cleared off and everything is put away. Some of it ended up "put away" in the guest room (more on that later) but at least I'm not walking past it 10 times a day.

Side note: love having trash dresser (the white one, behind the dining room table) downstairs so I can see it. I thought we wouldn't have space and it would have to live in the guest room, but it doesn't!

 The dining room is far from perfect, though. There's still this situation. Three things wrong with this picture: 1) burnt out lightbulb, 2) paint job, 3) THAT THIS ABOMINATION OF A LIGHT FIXTURE IS STILL IN MY HOUSE.

 I also put the books back in place a few weeks ago.

 I read somewhere that there's nothing like moving a book collection to make you rethink having it in the first place. So true. But they do look good.

 This is in the living room. It's one of the first pieces of art I've hung, which is kind of a big deal because I had hardly any art, period, when we last lived here, and very little actually hung. Paint needs to be touched up below the picture. It's a stolen sketch from One Kings Lane; I saved the image, turned it into a vector graphic and blew it up to the perfect size for the $3 clearance frame it's in. Stolen art is so satisfying.

Lastly, for this post, these are some of the colors I'm considering...

For this closet off my office, in which I've stuffed my decrepit stairclimber. (Bad light, bad pic, whatever.) Obviously this is where I work out, and I think it'd be fun to paint it a super-energetic color. I love purple on walls, but fuchsia or tangerine would complement the navy in the office proper. We shall see. I have plenty of other priorities at the moment.

What's New, Round I

So this is a motley assortment of very ugly photos, but I need to start somewhere because we've been doing SO much since we moved back about seven weeks ago. And it's dark outside now, so I can't take anything out there right now.

Sunday afternoon, I decided to tackle this mess (clarification: that's the CLOSET, not the booze):

 It's a closet in our dining room that somehow became an ideal dumping ground for paint supplies when we moved in four and a half years ago. From the ground up, that's an old rug in a trash bag, second shelf is mostly old paint and also an old towel, more paint, painting stuff (rollers, including three used (??) ones, miscellaneous crap, then the top shelf had a roasting pan, a set of dishes (boxed from when we moved from Pasadena five years ago), our wallpaper steamer and...a lot of dust.

I found three open containers of spackle: small, medium and large size. Two open and rock-hard tubes of silicon caulk. SIX paint rollers. Why?

Cleaning this closet also revealed uncapped wires in a box in the ceiling. I don't know if they're live or not, but have no reason to believe they aren't. So that's cool.

Anyway, I threw away all the stuff and got it into much better shape. Unfortunately, the following image doesn't really showcase all my work that well. You'll have to trust me; 1.5 garbage bags and half a roll of paper towels later, it's much better.

After years of driving me nuts, I finally replaced the retro 60s-era hardware on the built-ins in our hallway. Martha, ya done good (they're from her line at Home Depot). These were about $4 each, so it's not turning out to be a particularly cheap project at six in the hallway and another six in our bedroom for the built-in dresser, but it makes me happy every day to walk by non-ugly, non-retro hardware.

In the way of other updates, we had a garage sale, probably a month ago, and ditched a bunch of furniture and excess junk. And we went to the dump. Oh, the glorious dump, where you can throw away an entire full-size pickup truck load of trash for $21. I love the dump. So there's been a lot of paring down, and it has felt fantastic.

We've also done some painting, some replacing of hideous light fixtures and old outlets and some gardening. I redid my headboard (tufted, it's fab), hung curtains and plotted the kitchen remodel. The downstairs bedroom floor was refinished. The upstairs floor was refinished, too, and the bathroom is complete except for baseboard and a door covering the attic access. Todd's office upstairs is in the crosshairs for demolition and new drywall and insulation. Half the beds are mulched and the driveways got sealcoated by likely a fly-by-night operation, but that's a story for another post.

Clearly, there are a lot of overdue blog posts. But we're not going anywhere for a while, and I'm going to write them all. We're home. We finally have some traction here and stuff's getting done. It feels great.

Eat your heart out, BHG!

I got irritated this afternoon, coming home with some extra toilet cleaner and light bulbs, with the state of disarray our 2'x3' hall closet was in. I am among what I believe is a significant portion of women who have almost the same reaction to a magazine-caliber organized closet as they would to someone offering them a week in Aruba. I'm 95% sure I'd take the closet over the trip. Sadly, this is what my little closet looked like:

I love the efficiency of this closet: putting an outlet in it was one of the few bright things the builders of our house did. It's also fairly centrally located, providing a nice space to stash bathroom cleaning supplies, a dust cloth (just to the right is the living room) and a broom. I had added hooks a while ago, just to get some stuff off the floor, but there was (and still is) a LOT of underutilized space.

After observing this, I did what any reasonable person would do. I got out the jigsaw and went to take stock of my building supplies in the garage. After coming up with some leftover casing (trim) and a piece of plywood, I measured, cut, painted and installed. An hour and fifteen minutes later, BAM!

Closet 2.0. I made a third shelf, but I haven't decided whether to install it yet or not. Probably yes, but we'll see.

SUCCESS!

I spent the better part of Tuesday and Wednesday listening to obnoxious country music and putting the kitchen together. Since our appliances came and that obscene pink monstrosity is gone, I can tolerate being in the kitchen. Unpacking is a lot like Christmas, except that since I know what I packed to begin with, I know I'll like it. Shockingly, with our stuff settled in, I don't mind the kitchen that much. Don't get me wrong, I've been tirelessly plotting the remodeling plans, but I think it'll be okay for a few months. After things came together, this is how it looked:



I also think bathroom plans might be coming together (cross your fingers). I found a tub that wasn't in stock, according to Home Depot's website, but the store begged to differ. I think we're going to go with a deeper soaking tub (not a whirlpool), and I'm pretty sure that it will be the Kohler Devonshire in white. I though about the Archer, which was $20 cheaper, but they don't tell you that you have to use the $100 Kohler drain thingy, which made it a lot more. Sneaky. We also were considering an Aqua Glass because they make a soaker that costs half of what the Devonshire does, but then I read they crack.  So here's my review of the Aqua Glass Eleganza: given that pretty much the only purpose of a tub is to HOLD WATER, that sort of disqualifies it.



I met with a custom cabinet guy yesterday to duplicate this vanity for the bathroom. I was hoping to go with a lacquered white finish, but he said it would be significantly more expensive and take a lot more time than just staining it, so...maybe I'll get white cabinets in the kitchen.



I think we're going to go with this faucet. Kind of a fun style, huh? Another Home Depot find, knocking off the Pottery Barn. (Really, where do they get off charging $300 for a faucet? It's a FAUCET. It either works, or it doesn't. There aren't really features...)

The only thing that's presenting some trouble is flooring. I'd love Carrara marble (see pic) except that I don't want the whole bathroom to look like a cold tomb. Travertine looks warmer, but I don't want it to clash with the marble, since the marble's a gray tone, and the travertine (in ivory) would be more of a warm off-white. Porcelain is also an option; the ones I looked at looked so much like stone that I couldn't tell the difference till the guy told me.