The Closet That Wasn't

She Says:

I have a confession to make.  Or maybe we've already mentioned it, I can't recall, and I'm not going to read through the whole blog to figure that out.  My confession is this: we are addicted to reno.  This renovation is only phase one.  Once we tear down this entire house to the studs and rebuild it, we have plans for an addition.  Gluttons for punishment, I know.  But we are having too much fun.

The reason I bring this up now is that there is a portion of the hallway that is currently unused and walled off, because eventually that will lead in to the fabled addition.  But I need storage space *now.*  So we decided to build a "temporary" closet out of the unused space, nothing fancy, and cheap.

Here's the hole we're starting with:

We bought a $50 door, built bracing for it, and installed.  We patched the drywall, but didn't float it because this will all come out later anyway; like I said, temporary.  I guess that was about $20 in drywall and materials.

HoneyDo installed some $49 track lights, and I painted the whole thing with some leftover Ultra White from the spare bath.

I laid the floor, continuing the hardwood from the rest of the house.

Then we installed a $120 wire closet system.  I added a small bookcase that we didn't have any other use for; it makes great extra shelving.

We mounted a $20 Ikea Grundtal towel rack on the opposite side, for scarves (I've warned you before about my scarf problem).

And here it is, fully loaded!

I now have space for things that didn't have a home, like rags, aprons, and the vacuum cleaner.  Plus, it really frees up a lot of space in the master closet: blankets, sheets, and coats of every size and shape were moved in and are feeling right at home!

I already owned the baskets and boxes (I think I've also mentioned my basket problem as well), so no cost there.  That brings us to a grand total of $259!  Not bad for an entire new room!

I have to admit, at least once a day, I just open the closet, look around and sigh happily.

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Organize! Master Closet

She Says:

Now that I have a proper laundry, I need a place to put all those clean clothes!  We turned to the master closet space, which was woefully inadequate:

View to the left:

View to the right:

Aaaand that's the tour!  It's only 5 feet by 9 feet, so organization will be the name of the game for this room.  We also have plans to expand this room into the master bath footprint, but that will have to come later.  I need a closet NOW!

We wanted something a little prettier than wire racks for this closet.  We settled on the Allen & Roth system from Lowe's:

We chose several pieces from this system, all in cappuccino.  I like the semi customizable pieces, including shoe storage, drawers and baskets.

There wasn't just a whole lot of prep work for this room.  We tore out the old carpet, took down the wire shelving, and were pretty much ready for paint.  I chose Mercer Blue from the Valspar Eddie Bauer collection:

I picked this color from all the paint chips at the Valspar counter and fell in love with it.  Only later did I find out that apparently the rest of the world is in love with it too... for example, searching "Mercer Blue" on Houzz.com gives you over 36,000 results!  Ah well, if I can't be original, at least I can have good taste...

Because this closet is long and narrow, we chose some track lighting to fill the space.  

The positive is that it lights the closet well.  The negative is that they make for difficult photography in such a small space!

Next, the installation of the closet system.  It's pretty fool proof, we just followed the overly complicated directions and got it done.  It's also easy to customize this system with add on pieces to fit your particular space.

Again with the awkward camera angles: normally I would be all geeked out about the lens flare, but it's just annoying in these shots, so I apologize...

One thing about HoneyDo: he continues to surprise me!  As you can probably tell from here and here that I love baskets, but I assumed he would think that was too girly a thing to have an opinion about.  But when we were picking out the pieces for the closet, he said the baskets were cool and he wanted a bunch of them in the closet!  Woohoo!  No problemo, babe!  I think maybe he just wants to hide all my junk, but that's okay by me.  I'll take baskets any way I can get them...

Because we're running the hardwood throughout the house, we'll wait on this floor until the master is done, then do it all at once.

DIY: Basket Storage

I am always on the lookout for extra storage space, but I also like to put our little stamp on things to make it uniquely us.

We had some extra space in the laundry room and decided to add some cabinets.  We went back to our old faithful cabinet shop and found some small wall cabinets that fit perfectly.  These are the size and shape usually used above the fridge, but we used three side by side to create the look we were going for.

We mounted them flush to the ceiling using cabinet screws.  

Then we cut a piece of 1/4" furniture grade plywood to make a bottom for the cabinets:

and trimmed them out with a simple cove molding.

For the paint, I used Sherwin-Williams ProClassic oil base, just like on the laundry riser.  

As I started painting the cabinets, I realized I didn't want a monolithic block of cabinet doors and experimented with this basket I had on hand:

I liked the look of it, so I headed to Michael's to find some matching baskets and these stenciling tools:

and labelled the baskets with things I keep in the mud room: garden, auto, lights and misc:

I kept the doors on the either end to add a little interest.  And there you have it!

DIY: Washer Dryer Riser

She Says:

As I've mentioned before, one of the things on my laundry wish list was a custom riser for our washer and dryer.  We looked at buying the factory risers, but they were soooo expensive, and just didn't seem to be that useful.  After some web surfing inspiration, we decided to design our own.

The first step was actually the most fun... shopping!  I found three of these laundry baskets (one for lights, one for darks, and one for reds) at Target, and we designed the openings around them.

He Says:

Washers and dryers are heavy.  I chose a 1" thick hardwood ply for the project.  It's a big box with internal dividers, not too difficult.  Like all the cabinetry we're doing in the house, it's a ply box then faced with a poplar face frame.  The face frame is assembled with pocket screws and glue while clamped in a simple 90 jig clamp, then finish-nailed to the front of the cabinet box.

She Says:

I filled in the nail holes and other imperfections with wood filler, then sanded the whole piece with 120 grit paper and my beloved Mouse Sander.

Then I took a tack cloth over the whole piece, and brought out the paint!

Here's one point where HoneyDo and I disagree.  I love to work with oil based paint.  For anybody who doesn't know the difference, oil base is more forgiving on the application side (it goes on smoother and dries more slowly, so you have more than one chance to lay down the perfect brush stroke), and it takes everyday wear and tear much better than latex- no chipping.  It's a must for cabinetry, and really any wood furniture that anyone will be living around.  HoneyDo, however, despises it because it takes so long to dry- 24-48 hours to be able to touch it, and I like to give it a good week before i really test it out (say, placing a washer and dryer on top of it).  If you couldn't already tell, HoneyDo is, well, a Do-er, and he always ends up in the wet paint I am patiently watching dry.

Anyhoo, over the course of a couple of days, I gave the riser two coats of paint.

We used our trim color, Spice Delight from Olympic, but again, since I can't get oil based paint from Lowe's and Sherwin-Williams is often more helpful anyway, I got them to color match it.

We then had the obligatory fight over whether or not the paint was actually dry, and finally put the riser in place.  I will let him tell you about getting the front end washer and dryer up on the riser...

He Says:

It was freaking hard.  I think I pulled at least 3 or 4 somethings in my back.

She Says:

And here she is!

Very useful: brings the washer and dryer up to waist height, so I don't have to bend over or kneel down to transfer loads (renos are hard on the knees, so every little bit helps!) and I've got a great place to hide dirty laundry (or clean if I just don't feel like folding it, which is *always*).