Closet Shelving + A Makeover

The closet in our home office/guest room has always been a source of discontentment for me.  It's ultra long and narrow but only has a one door opening.  I don't mind the one door opening part and actually, I prefer it vs. double doors or bifold doors because it allows more wall space in the room it's attached to but it does make things a little more difficult storage-wise.  With a one door opening, it's a little harder to get back to the side recesses of the closet.  This room doesn't serve as anyone's bedroom (yet) so there aren't any clothes that need to be hung in the closet but if there were, we'd have to rethink it once again (probably going the route we did in this closet).  Currently, it's home to home decor we aren't using, craft supplies, gift wrapping supplies, pillows, and a few other random things.  Built as your typical closet with a long rod for hangers with a shelf atop it, it didn't allow me many options to store these things.  

When we moved in, we didn't have a place to put the co-sleeper we made years ago (tutorial here) so I thought it might be nice to have it in here to give us some shelving.  It fit so why not?  But, we soon learned that, because of how it was built, it didn't allow easy access to what we stored on it.  To get anything off the big shelves, I had to wheel it out (I stuck some casters on it before we put it inside this closet) and then wheel it back in...which also meant I had to move everything in it's way out first before wheeling.  If that sounds like pain in the booty it's because it was.  👎

Over time, things just got more and more disorganized in there because I didn't like to wheel out the co-sleeper shelves so I just started stacking things on top, shutting the door quick, and pretending it wasn't going all awry in there.

Yipe.

Out of sight, out of mind, right?

But then I rolled the dice and the home office became the Let's Room Together space for three weeks and I knew we had no choice but to open up the doors and tackle this closet.

It took us all three weeks working on it in our free time (which isn't abundant) but it looks and makes me feel 394857 times better.

Bleached Dressers - DIY

I'm really excited to tell you about this project!  It's a goodie but definitely not my normal "Hey!  Here's an easy peasy project anyone can do!" type of project.  It took a little more time and effort but it was so worth the end result.  Oh and hey, anyone really can do this, I didn't mean to sound deflating, just be prepared.  ;)

It all started with two of these little guys:

When we moved Seb and G over to their own room, separate from the twins, we needed a dresser (or two) to store their clothes in over in their new space.  I did my usual Facebook Marketplace/thrift store/resale group scours but came up short oodles of times...until I didn't.  I found these two small, matching dressers (the owners used them as nightstands but they're quite larger than your typical nightstand) for $20 each.  The only drawback was that I had to drive 45 minutes to grab them.  But, they're vintage, solid wood with some wood veneer, and in great working order so it was worth the car time.  Plus, they were perfect for what we needed them for.  His and hers.   

I could have just plopped them into the room as-is but that shiny yet worn dark stain and outdated hardware just wasn't my fave.  Painting was always an option and would have been a fairly easy update but then I came across this post on Within the Grove on how to strip and bleach wood furniture and I was SOLD.

I'll admit that there were more moments that I can count during this process that I wished I would've went down the painting route but I stuck with it, slowly but surely over the course of two weeks and golly gee whiz, they look much, much better.  👌 

Color Block Walls + Painted Curtains

I just love paint.  Don't you?  It's truly magnificent.   

It can pack a real punch for, really, not a whole lot of cash.  I leaned heavily on that fact when I made over the playroom-now-bedroom.  Solid walls are nice but, especially in a kids' room, adding a little more color on the walls ups the ante and makes things just a little more fun.

The walls in this room were painted right before listing by the previous owner (China White by Ben Moore) and it's really a great color (we've actually copied it to most of the rooms in our house so far and the exterior) but I wanted something a little more upbeat for S & G's new room.  I wasn't actually planning on painting this room when we first decided we were going to move them but then I thought, well, if we're going to be moving furniture around, we might as well paint.  Over-achiever, I know.  But it was worth the extra effort.  :)

The Process:

Before the walls got painted, I had to paint the trim (read our tips on that here).  The previous owner had also had them freshly painted but they had them painted a really shiny, ivory-beige color.  We painted the ceilings in here Pure White (Sherwin-Williams) back before we moved in and wanted to follow suit with the trim to make things cohesive.  The crown, door and window molding, and baseboards all got a that white treatment.  The chair rail isn't a favorite feature of ours and taking it down meant filling in holes and, since the top part of the wall is painted-over wallpaper (grrr...even though they did it semi-right by filling in seam gaps), there'd be a line where the painted-over paper met the chair rail that would also have to be hidden with some spackling.  So, while painting an entire room sounded fun, painting and having to fill in where the chair rail was didn't.  You can only be so much of an over-achiever.  Ha!  

Room Reveal - Playroom to Bedroom

I'm so behind here on the blog!  Three weeks ago we wrapped up another #letsroomtogether - a bedroom.  I mentioned in my last post that we were going to tackle Sebastian and Gianna's new room but at the point that I had written that, I had only just begun moving furniture around so we could paint.  And then we did and I posted some updates on Instagram (because it's just a little more convenient...I hate it) and Christmas came and yadda yadda and well, here we are, two weeks into another #letsroomtogether when I haven't even gotten to write about the one we left!  I'm knee deep into the office / guestroom at the moment but I'm going to back up because I've got a finished room on my hands and I hope you are here for it.  👊  It's cute, real cute.  ;)

 And so far, S & G are *still* loving it.  We thought maybe they'd miss the girls but as it turns out, they're together 24/7 anyway so just sleeping one wall over isn't really a big deal.

This room looked like this (a bad realtor photo) when we moved in (I know, you've seen it already but I just love pulling out the befores 35757 times...):

Pinterest. A Treasure Chest or a Junk Drawer?

I've been working in the playroom lately - it's my current #letsroomtogether space!  Well, technically, we're supposed to be working on a bedroom but, that's where we are headed with this room so it counts.  *high five*  Our kids have been sharing a bedroom for the past 2+ years and we are just now getting to the point where the twins could use their own space with a little bit more privacy than sharing a room with your little bro affords.  So, they're taking over the shared bedroom and we're moving S (6) and G (4) into the playroom, soon to be bedroom.  And then eventually, G will probably move back in with the girls when S needs his privacy and we'll be back to the drawing board.  We'll have kids' rooms to design for years to come.  Yippee!  They're probably my favorite spaces to design.

There's not much to write about as regards progress because really, I've just moved all of the toys to the middle of the room and started painting.  Nothing really fun.  I can't even say it's looking more like a bedroom.  But I can say it's turning the corner to looking more fresh.  To be honest, my plan wasn't even to paint this room yet.  It was to figure out how to separate and purge the toys and move one set of bunk beds in.  But, you know, you get the ball rolling on changing a space and, well, if you know me, aesthetics always somehow get involved.  Hehe.  So, we have yet to purge a single toy and move bunk beds even an inch BUT there's fresh paint going up.  I'm always a glutton for more work if it involves a fresh design.  ;)

This is the realtor's photo of the room when we were courting the house:

When we moved in, we basically tossed all the toys in and stamped it "playroom".

We knew eventually we'd want to repaint the trim - it was a glossy ivory/cream and was freshly painted before the house was listed but we wanted it to match the rest of the crisp white trim in the rest of the house so we had cohesive going on but doing anything to this room was very, very, very low on the priority list.

But, as it turns out, when it has to warp into a kids' bedroom, priorities get bumped up.  Things get planned, stuff moved around, trim gets painted all of a sudden...