A Little Closet Makeover

Last I checked in with kids' bathroom progress we were talking about the newly smoothed ceilings and cruisin' (maybe more like inching) onto the vanity.  Well so far, we've bought sinks, new faucets should be here Monday, and I'm going to try and hunt down a countertop next week.  I sanded down the cabinet frame sanded down the cabinet frame and need to start working on the doors but I've got an idea I've got to iron out before I keep going there.  Soooo...

I took a quick detour over to the closet.  I'm pretty sure it hasn't seen a fresh coat of paint maybe since the house was built 50 years ago much less a deep, deep clean.  Throw a bunch of stuff inside from a family of seven and...it was time.  Makeover!

First I emptied the whole thing out and scrubbed down every inch.  Then I painted the trim (Pure White by Sherwin-Williams color-matched to Valspar).

The walls were going to go the same white direction but in an eggshell finish (verses the semi-gloss of the trim) but at the last minute I decided to paint them the same color as the walls in the bathroom - China White by Ben Moore (also color-matched to Valspar).  Good-bye old yellowish beige, hello more modern beige.

Then the shelves all got the same China White paint job, primed first though so they'd hold up to sliding bins and such.

Psst...my trick to painting them horizontally all at once?  Our ladder atop a couple of sawhorses.  It's how I painted our kitchen cabinet doors too.  Works like a charm.

Now for the icing on the cake closet - pretty wallpaper!  (I've had fun wallpapering the backs of the closets in our house - see the guest room closet, the kids' room closet, the entry closet, and the pantry.) I found a roll of this wallpaper* at Dirt Cheap last year for $10 and didn't have any specific plans for it until this closet makeover came along.

It's peel and stick, which I prefer at this point in life because I spent so many hours removing glued wallpaper from the walls in this house.  Peel and stick means I can switch it up at the drop of a hat without much effort.  It's not as a easy as traditional wallpaper to install but with a couple of extra hands, it's not the worst.

One roll didn't quite cover the back of this closet though.  Luckily, I had just a smidge leftover from this dresser makeover to get me all the way acrossl.  The right side of the closet is pretty pieced together but, thanks to the small scale pattern, you can't tell unless you've got a magnifying glass and ya bring out your inner inspector.  See?

So, fresh paint, pretty wallpaper, and last, a new lightbulb.  The old incandescent was one of those very warm white bulbs and so I replaced it with my favorite color bulb for ceiling lights - 3000k.  These light bulbs* are my favorite.  I've got a few boxes stored away for times such as this.  Several of the ceiling fixtures in our house sport them and have for the past several years.  I've had zero flickering issues and no burn outs thus far.  For clear fixtures, I've bought a few clear 3000k bulbs on Amazon but I haven't found a bulb I really love that hasn't given me some sort of issue.  

Before I put everything back into the closet, I purged a little here and there, grabbed a couple of new bins from Dollar Tree, and organized things just a little more than they were before.  Oh and you might've noticed that the shelves bowed a little in the before picture.  They're just made from plywood and over time gravity had taken its toll.  Instead of making new shelves, I just flipped them over so now they still bow in the opposite direction but you can't tell and eventually, gravity will bring them back to the straight and narrow road...until they have to be flipped again.   

It's not a huge change from a photo point of view but in real life, it feels like a brand new, fun, happy closet.  It's such a small, mostly unseen space that now packs a little bigger punch when you open the door.

Now that hole in the wall to the right of the closet where a certain kid pulled too hard on the hook really stands out.  We're getting there, we're getting there.

Happy Friday!

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