Finished

I forgot to post a completed picture of the closet I built for myself. Phew good thing I remembered! ;)

I'm still trying to figure out that little space on the bottom left- I have some ideas though.

BEFORE

Stubborn

stub·born  

/ˈstəbərn/

Adjective

1. Having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, esp. in spite of good arguments or reasons...
2. Difficult to move, remove, or cure.

That's what I am. I freely admit it. When I get an idea in my mind, it is the best idea and I don't rest until it is done....or something like that.... :D

Well last Wednesday I was madly organizing my room, trying to get it cleaned up before Ty and his fiancee Jessica came up to visit. When I realized that my closet is awful. It's tiny and crammed with junk/clothes/shoes/everythingthatdoesnthaveahome. So I grabbed my handy dandy yellow notepad (love those mini ones!) and started drawing out what my new closet would look like. I measured and re-measured and drew out the plans. It was going to be awesome!
(after this chicken scratch I made it official by typing it all up and even breaking down how much all the wood would cost, I was $4 off!)

I obviously didn't get it done that day, I didn't even buy the materials that day. Ty and Jessica arrived reallllly late Wednesday night/Thursday morning. They just left Sunday afternoon but it was really fun to have them here and we got to meet Jessica which was cool. So we did lots of family stuff those days, no time to work on my new closet. Which is fine.

Saturday I did have a little bit of time so I cut all of my boards to size.

 First I measured and marked each board so I would know the exact pieces that board would make. That was very handy.
Cutting all the boards didn't take a whole lot of time, maybe about two hours (that includes digging for the correct tools-the tool section of the garage is next on my list).

A couple days later (today) I had a few hours between work and going back to work. The above is a ^^photo of my closet BEFORE ^^

Yaaaa....can you see why I need some help? Ridiculous.

There are 35 pack boxes of those thin velvet hangers at costco right now, seriously the best things I have bought in a long time! My mom bought me a box, then I went back and bought 2 more ($10 each!). So what I have a lot of clothes! I do have one whole box leftover for future use though.

These things are awesome clothes don't slip from them and they take up half the size of a regular hangers. Serious space saver.

   I have this $4 ikea clothes rack that I used to house all of my hanging clothes until the closet it finished. My room is literally an obstacle course right now.

Today I managed to get my 'shoe rack' done! Hurray. I cut little dividers for each of those shelves to split them in half, but I actually like it better without them, plus i have more room. Which I obviously need because I still have several pairs of shoes that don't fit.... (donation time!)

everyone scoffed at me and told me to get a pre-packaged closet kit. Glad I saved myself hundreds of dollars and proved them wrong!

 Tomorrow perhaps if I have some time I will finish up. The only parts I have left to do are cut 3 hanger rods and screw in 2-3 more shelves on the sides. To the left of the shoes will be a skinny rod to hang my long dresses. There will be a short shelf below those dresses for additional storage (remember we don't waste space). 

To the right of the shoes at the top will be another hanging rod for all my 'tops', sweaters, shirts, etc....Below that I am going to put another shelf and rod for all my skirts. That way, each type of clothing is sectioned out and much easier to sift through. The side shelves will be gone through and cleaned out, they are a mess right now.

Hopefully it will all be done soon so I can have my room back! 

My fingernail polish organization corner now! :) I obviously love the stuff.

Maybe this should be a 2nd post but I'm including it here....

We also worked hard and fast to get our craft room done. It was a disaster but between the garage, the laundry room, re-doing food storage, organizing closets, painting, etc....it got done finally.

 Walking in to the room this is what you see (Nicole, do you notice no more pink/white wall?:))

 The back 'kitchen' corner

 This is a craft cutting table I made for my mom for her birthday (2 months later....). I bought two of those expedite 4 cube bookcases for the base. Then got REALLLLY lucky at the re-store and found this heavy duty solid table top for $10. It was ugly and brown but I painted it and it works perfectly! There is a rounded spot at one end for all of the cutting supplies and the table fits our huge cutting mat exactly....literally exactly.

 The other side of the room has more of those expedite bookcases and desks for my mom and I to work at. Lots of storage.

 And looking towards the back.
It's nice to have it all organized and put away. Let's hope it lasts longer than a week :)

Going UP

(Random fact, I've never seen UP! the movie...I have it, I should watch it.)

I took last week off for 'spring break' then said just kidding it's not really my spring break (mine's NEXT week) but I took it off anyway. My mom also had the week off and Sam went to Utah for the entire week. Heckkkk yes.
Well it wasn't a break. Each day we devoured another room leaving a wake of destruction as we went.
Seriously I now know where I get my crazy jump from project to project and start in the middle of things and go overboard with ideas/biting off more than I could chew. My Mother.

We shopped for supplies Monday morning and got started when we got home. This is what we did.
1. Re-painted 2 walls in my parents room
2. Started making two mirror frames -one for practice- and a 'picture frame'
3. Spent WAY too much time distressing/staining/gluing/figuring out said frames
4. Cleared out under my parents bed whoa!
5. Started cleaning out the garage in the middle of the 'crazy living room filled with junk from under the bed' project
6. Bounced between those three things for awhile
7. Cleaned/organized kitchen drawers
8. I decided I didn't like the hall closets and their lack of function so I spent about an hour figuring out new ideas for both the small hall closets
9. I started thinking about organizing the tool/work section of the garage
10. Re-did hall closets
11. Finished frames
12. Made new 72 hr kits and lists of emergency stuff

phew! It was a loooong week but it wasn't bad. I ruined four pairs of yoga pants, two sweatshirts, and a pair of socks or two. wah wah.

The entire point of this was to show you the closets!
Did I ever mention I love power tools? They love me too because I still have all of my limbs!

So my mom emptied this closet before I could take a 'before picture' lame. It was a hot mess. Stuff falling out EVERYWHERE shoved into each nook and cranny. For an idea of what it was like imagine all of this:

 In that one closet....yiiikes. This was my Friday activity. Organizing this stuff, building the new shelves, and putting everything in it's new place.

not everything is folded nicely yet just seeing where things are going to go.

This is afterwards. I hate wasted space and with a lack of storage it's important to think "UP!" 

There are lots of things you can do vertically do make storage.

What?! Just ignore me. I re-do two closets and I think I'm Ty Pennington.

 

Here are some of the tubs I bought to organize. We found a fishing tackle box for like $6 and organized all of our medical stuff in it. I wanted a toolbox but we couldn't find a good one.

I labeled the top of the box to indicate what is in each slot of the First Aid box. If anyone needs moleskin between now and the apocalypse come on over.

The other good part of this closet is the over the door organizer. My mom found it at Costco and it seriously cleared out an entire kitchen cupboard and under a bathroom sink. So much storage. It's so vertical!

This is a before pic of the 2nd hall closet.

 Really I don't make this up. Everything gets piled on.

 A couple more befores

 From this photo can you guess what I'm thinking? If you guessed, go "UP!" you're the winner! All of that wasted space makes my neck itch. I think a guy must have put this up....(my dad meant well!)

After making more shelves and some unscrewing and re-arranging This is what happened:

 Coat racks up. Top shelf longer to fit all of the sleeping bags that were lodged in the top of the other closet before.

 This is where the cleaning stuff going so they each have their spot that goes "UP!"

 Put in the new shelf and wrapped it in damask contact paper. Just because. When I placed this shelf I measured the coats and screwed the shelf in right below the coats.

 That shelf created a handy spot for the little cart of cleaning rags/supplies. There are also three boxes. One of them is full of plastic bags, one is for aprons (Nicole do you have some of my aprons from the FR?) and the other has misc. winter items that were buried.

 The 'before' picture of this closet had that white cart in it. You just can't see it because it was buried under coats.

And it's done! There are the same number of coats in here are there were before. See how cool it is to go "UP!" (why do I keep doing that? It's dumb and I'm annoying myself).

You gotta do what you gotta do:

Conveniently/coincidentally everyone was gone Friday night so all of my limbs help build these projects :) There was some serious 'stud action' going on. I couldn't get the screws to go through the wall and some of them started smoking. So I had to readjust the shelf height but it finally worked!





Thinking vertically will give you A LOT more storage.

Tonight was spent trying to finish up the craft room. Pictures of that later ughh! Decided to paint it last minute so I did that tonight then made a craft table. OK I'm done I'll talk about that later. 

OH one more- pictures of my HUGE completed mirror frame. FINALLY DONE!

 Close up. If you want to have some fun, distress a piece of wood. Really awesome to purposefully ding something up.

 Before and After picture. From ugly gold sliding mirror closet door to whatever it is now. haha. Big.

Just Like Ron

Ron Swanson that is. If you don't know, Ron is a woodworker. He is also a fictional character. So there ya go.

A lot of times I decide to do things that I don't know how to do. I've said that many times on here. This weekend as I was working on my parents surprise room, Nicole and I made a headboard from plywood, foam batting, and a canvas paint cloth.

please note, those natural wood pieces are going to be painted or stained or something this week. There are also talks of building 'built-in' bookcaases/nightstands around the bed. This might not happen yet, we'll see. I have it all drawn out though. I also have some frames and other wall things to hang up eventually.

So it's pretty plain. My plan was to make it curved and have nail heads outlining it. But that didn't happen so it's just plain jane. Maybe I should get real fabric to cover it with so it's not so plain. We'll see.

I'd never made a headboard before. It was exciting.

The next day I started working on the mirror frame I wanted to make for their gigantic mirror. Well I wasn't able to move the big saw outside so I attempted to use the jig saw. It actually worked for the most part except the little parts that didn't cut evenly.

Nothing lined up right. So I decided to start gluing/filling this frame in. Super exciting if you know what you're doing. I didn't. I grabbed a handful of random stuff to try to fill those huge gaps in with.

 Silicone does not work.....

 Liquid Nails did nothing. My staples did nothing. That gap was HUUUUGE.

 Spackeling obviously didn't work. DUHHH

Needless to say, this first attempt at this frame was a complete and utter failure. Seriously it was like the bride of Frankenstein. After this mess I decided to try again today with the use of proper tools it was much easier. (I feel an object lesson coming on)

 Since most of the wood from that first frame was still good, I cut the yucky ends off and made a smaller frame for one of those cheap $5 walmart frames.

 Ahhh the corners actually line up without huge gaps! Without many gaps at all actually.

 I'm an expert at this now. They just need to make a left handed one with a smaller handle because my hands are too small to comfortably grip the saw.

 Glued the pieces into place and strapped it up to dry.

 I learned that the bright orange writing on the staple gun shows where the staples will come out. Ya....

 This is the smaller frame for the cheap mirror. I also made a smaller picture frame sized one as well as the HUGE mirror one. I will finish those up tomorrow.

 I don't do math. This was my attempt at figuring out the measurements. Whatever. Just go with it.

I also started one more project using this old drawer. It will be a surprise.

While You Were Out

I have an awful habit of 1. Hatching crazy person ideas 2. Thinking I can do too many things in very little time 3. Escalating ideas until they have grown into something similar to a blackberry bush (huge, overgrown, painful, etc...).

My parents went away for the weekend. Sam went to Utah to stay with Ty for a week. Shelley went to her aunts for Easter. Guess what that means? I got the entire house to myself from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening! While I should have taken advantage and played Just Dance until I passed out, or closed the curtains, stayed in my PJ's, popped some popcorn and had a movie marathon all weekend, or set up the hammock and read in the sun until it was dark, I didn't. Instead I chose to rip apart my parents bedroom and re-do it for them.

Nicole and I have a new deal where I give her permission to karate chop my throat next time I start talking about these wack-o projects.

I had to give them a 30 minute bumper after they left because sometimes they forget things and turn around. Once they hit 'the point of no return' (aka: the freeway) I started hauling stuff from their room. I honestly have no idea what provoked this madness.

They each got their own laundry basket where I put their stuff, everything else was stacked in boxes or totes and drug to the living room. The living room was half full of their junk stuff :). At this point I had to start moving the dressers and that's when I contemplated putting everything back in the room where I found it. Not even kidding. But I soldiered on.

Nicole was nice and came over to help that night. We primed the heck outta that dark room. We were covered in dust and paint, and more dust. It was a late-ish night. I slept for about five hours then started again. Nicole was nice AGAIN and came over that afternoon to help some more. Which was good because I couldn't move the bed. Plus if she didn't I would still be sitting in a corner covered in primer and whimpering. Probably.

Anyways I won't go into lots of detail but let's just say it was the weirdest long/fast weekend ever. Next time everybody leaves I'm calling a reading/movie marathon.

Before- lots of packing going on here CRAZZZZY

After. Ahhhhh no so crazy.

So I'll post some more about this room at some point this week prolly. There are a few things left to do then we'll do a fer real picture post. 

I'm completely exhausted in part because of this weekend but this entire last week I've been redoing a room for a resident at the GH where I work. She was at Disneyland so she picked out all of her favorite things and Stephanie and I redid her room while she was gone! I haven't seen her yet but I'm excited to see what she says. It took a REALLLY long time. Homegirl had stuff stashed everywhere and ONE wall needed almost an entire gallon of paint by itself. 

So it's been a long and tiresome week. 

My eyes are closing as I type, and not just in the blinking way.

Pictures of T's room:

*Not good before pics because we had started before I remembered to take pics.

Before

Before

Before

After:

And that's it for tonight. I need to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep. So excited to not work tomorrow, I would have not been pleasant to be around. I suppose I will be working on other projects though. I'm totally gonna sleep in (HA! Hopefully I can this time).