Master Closet Makeover

Most women can understand where I am coming from when I say that men must have created the basic closet. It makes no sense! You can hardly reach the top shelf, and there is so much wasted space under all your clothes (since there is just one pole to hang them all on, from long tunics and maxi dresses to short tops).
I knew from the moment I moved in that I wanted to make my closet more functional, while it may not be the walk in that I dream of having some day, it is, now, so much better than the closet the house came with. I am still in the process of unpacking all my clothes and putting them back in the closet and getting baskets to move some things from my over flowing dresser (so pictures of the organized closet will come later).
Before we get started I want to give a shout out to Jamie, what a great friend to help me time and time again on all my projects, even in the rain on Tuesday! This girl owns all the tools and has all the knowledge--I just know what I want, she makes it happen!

Before:

Clearly I have a lot of things... and this doesn't even give you a clear view of the mess going on, on the floor of the closet. Don't mind me in my painting clothes!

Here is a before and after of the paint job; clearly the previous home owners didn't know what a paint brush was, or they liked the half finished look? I like my light grey color much better. 

I knew I wanted shelves in the middle with 2 shorter poles (for tops) on one side and one longer bar on the other (for dresses and things).

Here is what we came up with:

The paint and painting supplies for this project cost me more than the other supplies (granted Jamie had a lot of the wood we needed from her closet remodel) which saved a ton of money. 

I have since moved the shelves closer together (they fit my boots perfectly) and I believe I have enough room to add one more. I also moved the lower bar up about 2 inches (ALL BY MYSELF, can you believe it!)

I think a good use of the space below the shelves would be a mesh basket that is on a track; the kind they sell at Home Depot, Lowe's etc, but I will save that for another day!

This weekend I hope to get my clothes situated in the closet, and get the doors back on (which I hope to replace someday also (gold and mirror sliding doors? It isn't the 80's people).

Happy Spring? I mean assuming we aren't surprised with anymore snow!

Travel Shadowbox

In November, for my birthday, my friend Jaime gave me a ton of wood projects to work on for my house. But as usual time got away from me, and I just now starting working on them--although I have had ideas for awhile. One of the projects was a very large wood shadow box, with a glass front.

When I am on a trip somewhere I have a habit of picking up business cards from restaurants and sites we visit, keeping tickets from attractions, and other seemingly useless things, so I decided I wanted somewhere to display them so my keeping them was justified. The giant shadow box Jamie gave me seemed like the perfect place.

I started by staining the shadowbox, this was my first staining project--it actually went pretty well, and I will definitely be doing it again.

I chose a weathered gray color.

(I just realized these are awful pictures) (Good thing this isn't a photography blog!)

Next I mod podged some map paper to the back of the shadow box and painted the inside black.

I wanted to add a travel quote. Lucky for me it takes awhile for mod podge to dry so I had plenty of time to hit the web in search of the perfect quote.

I chose "To travel is to live." --Hans Christian Andersen 

I still need to seal the stain and add a hole/slot on the top to easily add memorabilia in (but I will let someone else do that--I don't want to lose a hand)  but for now it looks great hanging on my wall with some NYC stuff in it!

It looks like a few more weeks of winter for us here in St Louis, and with my spring break next week, hopefully that means more crafting!