DIY Master Closet Dressing Room

Wow, so its been a while since I've blogged about any of my projects! It always takes so much longer to build stuff than I wish it would... but that's what being a stay-at-home Mom is all about- setting the project down to go color with crayons or swing outside or go for a bike ride with my precious girls... and I wouldn't have it any other way:)

I recently finished building a master closet dressing room for our master bedroom. It took me at least a year to finish it up. It could've taken me just a few long weekends but we won't get into that:)

 It was a small walk-through bedroom that connected to two other bedrooms. Since we didn't have a closet in our tiny Master bedroom, this room seemed most promising. Here's what part of the room looked like when we first bought it:

 

So in my spare time I began to google ideas for cheap ways to build a master dressing room closet. I really wanted it to look nice since I knew we would, at some point, turn it into a multipurpose room. I stumbled across sawdustgirl.com blog (great blog by the way) and saw her version of a master closet.  I took inspiration and decided to start building! Well, first we said goodbye to the purple... 

I wanted it to have a built-in look so I started by building a platform with two by fours for the base.  I also decided to use the bottom of an old tv armoire for extra storage and the best part - three drawers less for me to install.

The plywood we bought was cheap and only sanded on one side. So in the end I had a lot of wood filler work to do, but I think it was worth it.  But let me just say this real quick; if you ever want home depot to cut some plywood for you, make sure you get a guy who knows that the blade will take off an 1/8 of an inch with each cut.  I ended up with a few slightly skinnier pieces which I somehow finagled into a spot somewhere...just don't look too closely:)

We didn't have enough money to add plywood backing for stability, so I figured out a way to attach the towers (after I built them) with L brackets to the wall, and it worked great!   I cut the 1x2's to size for the face frames, then used wood glue and brad nails to attach the face frames to the shelving. 

I'd originally decided not to install any extra drawers just because they are a pain to do, but after thinking more about it, I decided we had to have six more.  I wanted to try my hand at building some drawers on my own so I ended up using cheap 1x6's for the boxes and 1x8's or more for the drawer fronts. I then edged it with sanded lath boards.  Its a little thicker than your standard drawer front but no ones notices and wait until you see what it looks like all put together!  Loved Gary's face when he saw the finished product. Apparently my ideas don't always look like they are going to work at first...

It was a fairly tedious painting job but after priming with bin shellac primer, I only had to apply one coat of paint.  I should have taken pictures BEFORE putting our clothes all away, but when you haven't had a closet for two years, well, I'm sure you can imagine.  The picture quality and lighting aren't the greatest but here it is: My Built-in Master Closet/ Dressing Room

Now I'm thinking that some baskets would look rather cute in some of those cubbie holes too.

The Reocurring Doorway

I finally got around to putting the doorway back in. It sounds weird, I know, but that's what I did.  When we moved in, we could tell that there had been another doorway in the foyer at one time because whoever had drywalled and mudded the patch hadn't done a very good job.
Last year my sweet husband Gary caught me red handed, tearing a hole in the wall... and I would have torn the whole thing out too if he hadn't stopped me, but he really wanted to finish the kitchen first. Yep...I like to have more than one project going on at any given time; so when I get bored of one project, I can give it a rest and do something else for a while.  I think it drives Gary nuts, but he LOVES my finished projects:)
Well, the kitchen is finished now (except for some touch-ups, but I'm sick of painting at the moment) so I got my hammer and saw and went to town on the wall. This is what's been staring at us for the past year. I even painted around it when painting the foyer so as to not waste any paint. (Ignore the unfinished stair wall - its in the process...)

And then after 5 minutes, it looked like this, but on the other side of the wall.

Yes, that is insulation. I don't usually wear gloves, but I definitely did for this project!
It only took me an hour and a half total from start to finish to tear it all out, throw it all away, and then clean up.  Guess who helped me clean:) 

 I still have to figure out what to do with this floor... I think I might save it and patch it...the correct way.

Well, its not pretty, but its one step closer to my goal. (Excuse the ugly sofa. I'm debating on whether to paint it or to reupholster.)

Hopefully within the next week or two I will be building some skinny french doors for this 38" doorway. I'll let you all know how it turns out when I do:)

How I turned lath into flat panel wainscoting and stayed on budget

For those of you who don't know what lath is; Lath is a thin, narrow strip of wood used under roof shingles or tiles, on lath and plaster walls and ceilings and in lattice and trellis work.
You can buy lath at Menards or Home Depot for under $8 per bundle. I think I used about one bundle for my stair well and foyer. Some pieces are better than others and since lath isn't made for finish work, it requires some sanding and weeding out the unusable pieces.

You're probably wondering why I chose lath. Well, when you're living on a single income, sometimes a lot of times you have to cut corners. Anyway, that is the case in this house.  So if I want to spruce up my foyer and stairway, $8 lath is the way to go for me.

First of all I measured the stairway to figure out how high I wanted my top runner board to be. I ended up matching it with the railing on the other side which was about 20 inches from base trim to bottom of runner board. For the top runner board I used 1x4's with trim underneath to match. After cutting and installing those to fit I had to figure out the angle to cut the lath at. I'm not too particular about this but it needs to be close.  And for those of you who don't know me, caulk is my best friend when it comes to white trim. Love that stuff! It has saved me so many times:)
To figure out how to cut the correct angle I placed the lath piece on the wall, leveled it, and used a pencil to mark the angles. Then I used the chop saw to cut the lath to length by following the pencil marks. Worked out great!
I placed the lath on the wall with brad nails at every 6.5 inches to get the look I wanted. Not to worry about any small cracks showing right now. My trusty caulk will fix that later.

So I think I'm going to have to paint some of the oak... I know, I know, some of you are probably cringing but its the only way this stairway is going to look awesome. And my husband gave me permission! :)

See how there's old paint dripping under the newel post caused by the previous owner? And apparently there are 3 different stains that were used that do not match whatsoever. Those are just a few of the many reasons why I'm going to paint some of that oak.

How to remove the carpet on stair treads DIY style

So for my next project I'm tackling the old stairway and foyer.
When we bought this house two years ago, the stairs were covered with an old carpet and I knew I wanted it gone fast. But the kitchen took precedence and so it had to wait for a bit. But now I really want to get this done and hopefully bring this staircase back to its original glory.

I've already painted the walls and started on some trim but first things first; tearing out the carpet. 
I didn't know that my treads had millions of staples imbedded to keep the carpet from shifting,  and I'm not even sure if its the kosher way to install carpet on treads but holy cow- my fingers hurt from tugging and pulling to get those darn staples out! Pulling this carpet up definitely requires some muscle. Also, I probably should have worn a face mask because I'm pretty sure there were at least 8 years of sand and dust in that carpet! Gross... Keep your vacuum handy and a bottle of bleach water to clean the heck out of the treads after the carpet is gone. You will need pliers, a claw hammer, and a small flat blade screwdriver for the extra deep staples. Oh, and a large garbage bag to place the old carpet into immediately.

Try to pull up on the very corner of the carpet with pliers until you are able to pull it back just a bit. Get a good hold with those pliers and start yanking away. Gloves would come in handy right about now.

A New Kitchen on a Budget

Wow, what a year! In between taking care of our two little girls and working on this kitchen, I don't really know where the time has gone! We moved into this beautiful old house two years ago. It needed a lot of work but we saw so much potential... Potential yes, but we have learned when you open up an old house, you open up a can of worms!  After tearing out a 6 foot wide chimney (I don't suggest ever trying that) which was filled with soot and walled up with drywall, we reinforced with beams and fixed the last DIY homeowners mistakes. Then we were ready to make our kitchen look like a kitchen again.
This is what it looked like before and during the rather long journey of being the home owner of a 100+ year old house.

Looking into the kitchen from the very narrow doorway.
Who ever thought this was a good space for the fridge...

This is where I cooked for about a year.

Finally, we had saved up enough to buy some unfinished cabinets from a big box store. I think it cost a little over $1000.00 for all the cabinets.
It looked fairly easy to install. We just had to make sure it was all level. But Installing perfectly square cabinets on an old slanted wall can be challenging. My husband and I somehow managed to get it done in a few hours though with a little fudging here and there...

I decided this part needed a corner cabinet and building it from scratch was the cheapest route.

Almost ready to start the "finish work"   

Since there were 11 inches left above the stacked cabinets, I decided to install a three piece build-up of crown molding.

As you can see, we have a crooked ceiling. Go figure.

The little space above some of the molding really bugged me, so I resorted to mudding the ceiling flat and caulking a bit.

It was Fall time and I needed to spray paint my cabinet doors in the basement before it got too cold.
I originally wanted to have white, glazed cabinets but finding the right shade out of the millions of whites to go with my old white appliances proved much tougher than I first realized. I ended up choosing Sherwin Williams "Snowbound" which didn't look "dirty" next to the appliances. Did I mention that there are a gazillion white paints to choose from?!  Some day I will get stainless steel appliances...a girl can dream:)

My set-up in the basement. Worked great!

The best primer that I discovered works better than anything else is the BIN Shellac based primer. Love this stuff! It will keep the tannins in the wood from bleeding through.  I also invested in a Wagner spray gun to paint the cabinets, and for $100 I'm so glad I did!  I did about 5 coats including 2 coats of primer to get the coverage that I needed.