Weekend in Nashville

I hope you all have had fabulous weekends! Mine has been busy!

I flew into Nashville last week to visit my older sister and my nieces. My nieces and I have been playing with lots of dolls (Barbies, Polly Pockets, Lalaloopsies and various other stuffed animals — to be exact) and having tea parties.

We went to the huge Nashville flea market and I bought a pretty, handmade, wooden, farmhouse type table for our foyer to use as Drew’s desk/larger dining room table if we have guests over. I love it! I can’t wait to see it in our house! (I’m a little worried about how we are going to fit it in Drew’s car to get it home though. The legs come off with bolts and I’m just hoping the top won’t be too big to fit in the back.)

This weekend my mom and my younger sisters came down as well. We did lots and lots of shopping! For clothes and shoes and house goods and back-to-school things. My mom even looked at new cars. The main goal of our weekend though was wedding shopping!

I tried on a wedding dress here in Nashville during spring break that I really loved. I’ve tried on others since then, but none that I liked as much as this one. I really wanted my mom and sisters to see it, so we made sure to stop by and try it on again. Which, speaking of places to try on dresses in the Nashville area, if you are around these parts and are looking for wedding dresses, you should totally stop by The White Room. All the people that work there are so nice and they have beautiful dresses. Anyway, I tried it on again and didn’t want to get out of it! It is the perfect color — a soft, antique, light champagne/off-white/almond/vanilla color with the most delicate lace and the prettiest subtle sparkle and shimmer. The best part is— that it is MINE! We ordered it!!!

Since we ordered it, they did allow us to take pictures of me in the gown, but no one had brought our cameras because we didn’t expect to be ordering it then. I did get a few on my phone, but they don’t really do the dress justice, so I’m weary of posting them. Here is a little sneak peek:

I’m getting more and more excited about the wedding the more things that we get marked off of our wedding to-do list. It is making the whole thing a little less stressful and a little more real. Ordering the dress wasn’t the only thing that we accomplished on the list this weekend either! We also bought the fabric for the bridesmaids dresses!

This picture definitely doesn’t do the bridesmaids’ fabric justice either. It is a creamy/gray linen fabric with a lovely texture. I’m so excited to see the dresses once they are done and paired with bright colored flower bouquets! I can’t wait for the wedding!!!

It is getting closer! We’ve got the date set, the venue booked, the photographer booked, we’ve talked to the caterer, we’ve ordered the dress, bought the fabric for the bridesmaids dresses—we are definitely getting closer! I’m excited to be getting down to the fun little creative details now that we have most of the big stuff out of the way!

If you’d like a better idea of what my overall vision/inspiration is for the wedding, check out my wedding board on Pinterest!

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My Desk

One thing that I really needed in our new apartment was a desk. I needed somewhere to be able to do my homework and study during the school year and a space for my computer to go while designing things and writing blog posts. I knew from the start exactly what I wanted it to look like. I wanted a dark wooden desk with plain, simple lines. I didn’t want it to have any drawers or anything because I knew if it did, it would be way too heavy and hard to maneuver up the stairs to our apartment by ourselves.  We had more than enough issues trying to get Drew’s desk into our old apartment (read about that, here) and then we ended up having to get rid of that desk when we got to our new apartment because it was too big and too heavy for the stairs.

So anyway, usually I have a hard time finding anything that fits my mental vision of what I want for a room. However, in this case, I must have struck gold. I found exactly what I wanted and at a really good price too! Enter IKEA’s INGO dining table. Solid pine, straight, simple lines, not too heavy or bulky, the perfect size and only $69.99! The only problem however, was the fact that New Orleans does not have an IKEA. 🙁 This is a very unfortunate fact because there are always little things that I find that I want from there and they usually have such great prices.

However, I wouldn’t have taken the time to bring you this far into a post, if it just stopped there. Enter this service. If you checked out the link, you will see that there is this company in New Orleans that basically just travels to the IKEA in Houston every week to buy things for people that want them but that don’t want to travel all the way to Houston, Texas just to go to IKEA. There is a 20% charge added to all orders that are under $1000 and a 15% charge added to all orders over $1000. Which is obviously more expensive than if there was an IKEA in New Orleans where I could have just gone and gotten it myself, but isn’t that bad really since shipping would have been more than that (if IKEA even offered shipping or sold hardly any of their products online).

I found out about this service through Drew’s former landlords whom I also babysit for and we have done a couple web design projects for. They were planning on ordering stuff from IKEA to furnish Drew’s old apartment in their house, so they offered to let us also add whatever items we wanted onto their order as well. (getting us the 15% price charge instead of the 20% charge). That made my table $69.99+$10.50 for the service charge + tax. Still, not a bad price for a solid wood desk. (Plus we also got some bookcases for the hallway while we were ordering things)

Therefore I ended up with this in my office:

You can just ignore all the clutter and the million other projects that I still need to do in this room. I don’t have any other furniture for this room yet, so I don’t have any place to put the things in those boxes and on the floor.

It was just what I always wanted. Except that it was a little naked. I wanted it to be dark (I like dark wood, plus it covers up pencil/pen marks and scratches better than lighter stains or paint colors)

So off to the foyer it was. We have our foyer closed off from the rest of the house right now since it just has storage in it anyway so that we aren’t cooling it. I opened all the windows in there for air circulation and got to staining.

Two lovely coats of stain later and I had this:

The stain was still a little wet in that picture, so that is why it looks so wet and shiny. It also isn’t quite so red in real life either. I decided not to add polyurethane or any kind of coating to the top because I didn’t want it to be shiny. I wanted a more natural look that sort-of would look weathered over time. I might change my mind later, but for now it is fine.

I love it! It will obviously look better once the rest of the room looks nicer as well. I’m loving that I have a space to work and blog at now! I really, really love the size of it. It looks kind-of small in the picture, but it is really actually quite big for a desk. (it originally was a 4 person dining table) I love that I have room for my computer and papers and everything on my desk all at once. Yay! 🙂 (Now Drew is jealous because we still haven’t gotten a new desk for him since getting rid of his old one)

Oh, and if you live in the New Orleans area and are interested in IKEA products but don’t want to travel to Houston, Blue Bag is a really great service as far as my experience with them goes! (My desk originally came with the holes missing in two of the legs to connect them to the table top and they switched the legs out at IKEA the next week.) I would definitely recommend them and plan on placing an order with them again soon!

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Laundry Room Updates

Of all the rooms in the house that have gotten updates lately, the laundry room definitely tops the list. A lot has been going on in there.

To refresh your memory, here is what it looked like when we moved in:

We immediately had the dryer plug (that is laying across the washer) fixed with a longer cord to go around the washer to avoid any electrical + water issues. We also majorly scrubbed the tile floor because they were ridiculously filthy. We also moved our deep freezer in here so that now it sits in front of the dryer.

I know it definitely isn’t the prettiest room in the house and it probably never will be. It is the room that we spend the least amount of time in, so I didn’t want us to spend a ton of money fixing it up right now. What does matter though, is that it is functional. It needs to house the laundry stuff, the utility stuff, the cleaning supplies, the tools, the extra toilet paper, paper towels and light bulbs… etc. We also needed to hang the blinds in there (you can see the box of them in the foreground of the above picture) that the previous owner left but never hung. I also already had teal colored curtains from my freshman college dorm room days that matched the laundry room tiles perfectly to hang in there. We also wanted to make the shelving on the wall a little more practical than it currently was.

So what did we do?

We started by hanging the blinds and the curtains. (which still need to be ironed, I know)

Then we sought a replacement for this tremendously ugly, dysfunctional and crooked shelf. (That is lacking in the storage department)

But first we had to take the old one down. Which left us with this ugly mess.

However, we quickly made the most of our storage space with three longer and cleaner looking shelves with slightly smaller brackets than the ones used on the previous wonky shelf.

Then I did my best to cover up the old paint marks with some mixed white and cream craft paint.

Oh how amazingly convenient is this quick change. Now there is plenty of room for laundry supplies, cleaning supplies, ironing equipment, tools, toilet paper, paper towels, light bulbs… Ahh, how I love having things organized.

But our laundry room changes don’t stop there. We took this makeover a step farther.

We added a new washer and dryer. Well, new to us at least.

This wasn’t high on our priority list, but it kind-of just happened. There is a girl from our hometown that has lived in New Orleans for several years and is getting ready to move to Texas. Her new apartment already had a washer and dryer, so she had no need for her old ones. Her mom is friends with mine, so her mom asked mine if we might want to buy her used ones from her. We already had a washer and dryer that we bought for really cheap from the previous owner of our apartment and the washer was newer and worked fine, but we were a little worried about the really old dryer. We had some problems with it not working when we first moved in, but Drew eventually got it to work. However, we thought we had better not pass up a good deal on these two almost brand new, matching, taken well care-of appliances. (especially since we thought our dryer might not hold up too much longer and we wouldn’t have an opportunity like this later)

Doesn’t it look so much neater, cleaner, better and more organized?

We do still need to find a nice rug to go in front of the washer and dryer though. You can see in the foreground of the last picture that there is a random metal thing that sticks slightly out of the floor right in front of the washer. Overall though, I’m so pleased with the transformation of this room so far!

What do you think?

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Summer Cooking

I love summer. The sunshine, the flowers and trees, the warmth, the color, etc. I also love summer for its food. Fresh veggies, fresh herbs, berries, lemonade, etc.

One thing this summer is quite different though. It is the first summer that I haven’t lived at home. (apart from one summer that I was in Europe for a month and a half in high school) It has really been different. I’m enjoying being in New Orleans and being able to settle in and get the house put together so that when school starts I’m already settled and ready for the school year. I like that I have the time to see things in New Orleans that I don’t have time for when I’m in school. I’m glad that I still get to see Drew (since he would have been in New Orleans for school/work no matter if I was here or at home) and that we can work on wedding planning together.

But there are a lot of things I miss about home, especially now that it is summertime. I miss my sisters and my family of course, but I also miss our land a lot. I miss the relaxing breeze through the trees with no one else around, I miss our flower gardens and herb gardens and big vegetable garden and having all those fresh foods to cook with. I miss being inside with so many windows around that you feel like you are outside, I miss the chickens walking around the yard and the pool and the hammock.  I just miss the feeling of summer in a small country town. It is so much more laid-back and just completely different than it is to be in the city.

Luckily, I’ll be home to visit in a month or so (and hopefully will catch the county fair as well!). Visiting isn’t the same as being there all the time, but its all I can do since my responsibilities require me to be in New Orleans for at least the next few years of my life. (and I do love New Orleans too)

Anyway, it is nice to see our apartment slowly starting to feel more like home. It still feels pretty unsettled since we do still have boxes of stuff to unpack (with no place to put them–the reason they are still in boxes) and piles of things lying around with no furniture for them to go in or on. We’ve been scouring flea markets and used furniture stores looking for the perfect pieces, so hopefully soon our house will start to fill out with furniture. (I do have a few house updates that we’ve done recently to share with you soon!)

In the meantime, one of my favorite things to do that reminds me of both home and summer is to cook. So cooking I’ve been doing. This week I made a homemade fruit tart (my absolute favorite dessert! Especially for Spring and Summer!).

It was yummy! Although it was really big and since Drew doesn’t really like cream cheese and there is cream cheese in the filling, he wouldn’t eat any. Therefore I was left with an entire tart to myself. Not that I probably couldn’t eat it myself, but it isn’t as fun when you aren’t rushing to try to steal the last piece from your sisters. 😉 (I think Blake taught us all well on that one)

I’ve also been enjoying using my windowbox flower/herb garden. Which has grown a ton and continuously been flowering for over a month now.

Yesterday I used some of my fresh herbs in a chicken/lemon/herb/fettuccine alfredo. It was delicious!

So I haven’t had my parent’s fresh garden vegetables to make summer dishes with, but I am doing my best with my little herb collection. It was particularly nice cooking dinner yesterday. It was raining outside and it was so nice to be in the kitchen smelling delicious smells and being able to look outside at the trees and the summer rain and also see my little herb and flower garden fluttering in the rainy breeze. It was a little taste of summer at home. It was one of those moments that made our house seem so much more like home and made me so thankful for everything God has given me in life. It is definitely way different than all the dinners I used to cook in Drew’s old apartment’s cramped little cave-like kitchen. (I remember those dinners fondly too, but a view or some sunlight would have been nice too)

Oh, I also have gotten several requests that I should share recipes on my blog. I’ve been meaning to for a while and I’m working on it, I promise. I’ll let you know soon when I get that up and running. 🙂

 

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Kitchen Inspiration

I have more vacation adventures to share with you, but I thought I would take a break from vacation posts to bring to you a little bit of inspiration. Or at least show you something that inspires me.

I love looking at pictures of pretty homes, rooms, and decor. They never cease to stir up inspiration and creativity in me. However, sometimes they also make me a little sad that I don’t have the layout, time, or money to achieve anything nearly as pretty as them at this time in my life in my own apartment.

Although today I did stumble across this kitchen picture from one of my favorite blogs:


I love the pretty and relaxed feel of this room. It is colorful but subtle, country but classy with modern touches, and it just feels like such a livable space. I especially LOVE the island/table in the middle!

The more that I looked over this picture, the more I realized what I also loved about it was that a similar look is totally and easily achievable in my own kitchen! In our apartment we already have cabinets and countertops that look similar to these. We have stainless steel accent pieces like this kitchen (although not stainless steel appliances) and the few other accent pieces that we have are in a similar chartreuse color as the ones seen here. The breakfast table that we have in the kitchen also has similar legs to the ones on the table here too. We obviously can’t re-create everything in this picture in our space, but why would we want to do that? It is meant to give us inspiration and to take it and make it our own rather than copy it exactly.

Finding images like these that allow for reachable design goals are becoming even more of an inspiration to me than any images in designer magazines that I can’t even begin to try to achieve! Yay for achievable inspiration!

Check out more of Kara Paslay’s home and awesome design on her blog, here.

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Elephants

My Mamaw loved elephants. She collected pins and jewelry and things with elephants on them. I like them too. I don’t know if it is just because she did or not. But I think they are such amazing creatures. They are so big and so pretty. They are my favorite animal to visit at the zoo. I want to take a  ride on one some day.

Anyway, a month or so ago, I saw this little elephant guy on one of the blogs that I read:

I fell in LOVE. I wanted a little elephant just like this one. But in white. She got hers from HomeGoods, but New Orleans doesn’t have a HomeGoods. I looked all over for a little elephant like this. Drew even looked all over trying to find me one for my birthday. Neither of us had any luck. Until just the other day.

We were at Burlington Coat Factory the other day looking for ties for Drew. I had never been in there before and obviously as soon as I saw that they had a Home section, that is where I was. Guess what I stumbled upon:

They aren’t exactly the same of course, they are much more stylized than the inspiration one. But still cute. I wanted a white one originally, but I didn’t like this white one as much as I liked the black one. I thought the black one looked more like an elephant the way it was standing. The white one is sitting funny for an elephant. Maybe I’ll spray paint it later on. I’ll have to see once the decor in my office is all done. 🙂

Plus it was only $6.99! Pretty good for something I had been searching for!

So cute! Do any of you have special things or animals that you like? Do they have a special connection to somebody or some memory?

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More Plants

Our little family of plants here in New Orleans has grown by a few.

First off, we have this Sweet Olive tree that we bought right after we moved in. It is actually an outdoor plant that is supposed to be planted in the ground, but in our excitement at seeing a Sweet Olive tree, we bought it before thinking about things like that. Sweet Olive trees absolutely smell amazing. I wish I had Sweet Olive perfume. Drew was so excited. He likes them so much that last year we even considered naming our design business, Sweet Olive Designs. Yes, they smell that amazing. So we’ll see how the little guy does inside. He should be okay. The foyer gets the right amount of sun that he needs and his roots should only grow until they reach the limit of space that they have in their planter pot, so I don’t see what the problem would be in his indoor existence.

Isn’t his pot pretty? We looked all over for the right size pot that he could grow into a little and that also looked nice. The options at garden centers were ugly and actually pretty expensive. (Well, for our budget at least and for one that big) This one we actually found at Burlington Coat Factory of all places. I’d never even been to a Burlington Coat Factory before and I definitely didn’t expect them to have a Home section. But they did and they had this lovely planter pot. (They also have a better and cheaper selection of men’s ties as well. That was our original purpose of shopping there. Drew got a promotion at work and now has to wear ties everyday to work. We shopped at Dillard’s last week for some more nice dress shirts and ties and just one tie was over $60!! How ridiculous! Not to mention that not that many of them were very pretty either. Someone at work told him to try Burlington Coat Factory and they did have a nice selection of pretty ties and with good prices too!)

We also have two small little basil sprigs that are ‘babies’ of our other basil plant. (I think it is a lettuce leaf basil, but I could be mistaken on that) My mom pulled them off when she was here and told me that if I put them in a glass of water, they would grow roots and I could plant them and have more basil plants. So that’s what I did. They’ve been growing in a glass jar of water in our windowsill for the last two weeks.

I was surprised at how fast they developed such big root systems! I figured that their roots were finally big enough that they could survive on their own in the wild our windowbox. Our windowbox is doing quite well so far. All my plants are growing like crazy. I’ve used the basil and the oregano in multiple recipes so far and they also taste quite delicious!

My new baby basils are right there in the front, in the center of the windowbox. Right next to their basil mommy. Hopefully they will adjust to the soil and their other herb friends quite well. That is as long as Drew remembers to water them while I’m gone for the next two weeks!! I hope you are reading this Drew. You better not kill my plants.

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Our New Couch

Pretty big purchase huh? I’ve never had my own real furniture before. Especially brand new furniture. It is pretty exciting to actually be picking out furnishings for rooms other than just a bedroom. I told you all about our couch when we picked it out, here. Well it has been here a week and in that week I think it has gotten three times more use than any other piece of furniture in our house. Here are some pictures of it on the day it arrived:

Ignore the dark spot on the middle cushion. That is just a water spot. I had to use a wet rag to get a big dirty handprint off of it from one of the delivery guys. I wasn’t too happy about that. But luckily it came right off. So far the couch has handled minor little clean-ups quite well.

When we first looked at this couch we were a little worried about the color. We wanted something more neutral. However, so far I really like the color. It is pretty and soft, but adds a slight bit more interest to the room. Plus I think with mostly neutral decor and a few other pops of color, it will almost feel neutral anyway. Plus I’m a big fan of the color green.

I’m not a big fan of the pillows on it though. The colored diamond patterned ones are just horrible. Yucky fabric, yucky colors, yucky rough texture, etc… But I think they will be fine to recover with some fabric that I already have. The brown ones are okay, but I don’t really like the square/diamond pattern in the stitching. Plus one side is sewn up with completely wrong colored thread. But I can live with those ones for now. Maybe later I’ll recover those ones too.

This is the fabric that I already have that I think I’m going to re-cover the pillows with. You can also see the pattern in the stitching on the brown pillow better here too.

So far we really like it! I’m excited to see how much better it looks once we have the living room put together a little more. I’ve already got ideas for art on the wall above it and I hope to someday get a coffee table or tufted ottoman to go in front of it, small side tables on either side, a different rug, and some other furniture for the room. 🙂

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Empty House

I can’t believe that we’ve been in the new house a week already! It feels like we’ve been here longer than that. I guess because we spent a month and a half dreaming about it before we could actually move in. We’ve done a lot this week though. The previous owner left a ridiculous amount of nail holes, nails, and other hanging devices in every single wall. I took all those out, patched them up and repainted over those spots on the walls.  We got our new couch delivered! I planted the windowbox, we built shelves in two of the closets, we hung a curtain rod and the pink curtains from my old dorm room in my office, Drew took apart and fixed the dryer, the handyman came and fixed two outlets, patched up some of the walls, caulked around the tub and did some other minor repairs as well. My mom bought me a bed frame for the bed for my birthday, so the bed is no longer on the floor. We’ve gotten a good amount of our stuff unpacked and bought little various things for the house. I’ve also picked out nice and also inexpensive bookcases for the hallway and found the perfect desk that I’ve been wanting! (although they aren’t here yet) So needless to say, it has been a busy week! Drew has also been working all week and I’ve babysat and worked on several design projects that I have going at the moment. It does feel like maybe things are starting to settle down a bit.

However, let’s rewind a bit, shall we? Before all these things got done, we moved into an empty house. Would you like a tour of it before we moved anything in? I gave a tour of it, here, when the previous tenant still lived there and you can see the house will all her stuff in it, but since it will look totally different with our stuff in it, I think it is nice to start with a blank slate of pictures for comparison down the road.

Here we go:

Open the door and this is the view of the foyer. (For pictures of the outside, stairway, and our door, see the first house tour.)

This is the foyer looking back towards the door. I just love those windows and the hardwood floors!

The foyer has red French doors that open into the living room. See all the sunlight that fills the space? There weren’t any lights on when I took these pictures.

This is a view from the other side of the living room looking back into the foyer.

A view over to the side where the couch will be. (or actually, where it already is)


This view is from the same side, looking into the living room and on into the foyer from the hallway.

This is the hallway right off the side of the living room that runs all the way down the house. The kitchen is the first door on the right, the smaller bedroom/office is the second door and then at the end of the hallway is the laundry room. At the laundry room, the hallway turns to the right and straight into the bathroom with the second bedroom being on the left.

This is the view in the first door off the hallway–the kitchen. See, still lots of sunlight.

The kitchen is pretty big actually. There is room for our little round table and chairs under the window. The door open on the right is the pantry. However, Drew’s favorite thing about this room is the dishwasher.

This is the same wall with the pantry on it. The door closer to the front is a private stairway that goes outside. We are pretty much just using it for storage. You can see a view inside it in the old house tour, here.

The kitchen!

View into the smaller bedroom/office.

This is the far left corner of the room as you walk in. A nice little nook area.

The corner looking back towards the door.

Another look back towards the door, with the closet as well.

As you reach the end of the hallway, it turns into the laundry room.

Pretty basic laundry room. I’m just happy that we have one! This one is pretty big though. We also have our deep freezer in there now too.

The hallway then turns to the right and the bathroom is straight ahead and the bedroom is to the left.

Bathroom.

Pretty built-in.

Then you look into the bedroom.

From the other side of the bedroom looking back at the door, you can see Drew’s closet on the left and the linen closet on the right.

Another view of pretty much the same thing, but from the other side. You can see the bathroom door outside the bedroom door.

Goodness! That was probably more than you bargained for. But hey, now you know what we started with and can follow our progress as we decorate and make it ours! 🙂

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Closet Renovations

Another one of the great things about our new apartment is that it has plenty of storage space for us. There is a large pantry in the kitchen in addition to cabinet space, an extra stairway entrance that we can use completely for extra storage, a nice sized laundry room with shelves and a little storage alcove thing, a pretty built-in cabinet in the bathroom, a deep built-in medicine cabinet in the bathroom, two closets in the bedroom and another bigger closet in my office. However, two of the closets were a little quirky. Quirky in this case meaning not so practical.

This is the closet in my office. I’ve heard of double names in the South, but double closets? Apparently, the original closet (the very back one) wasn’t big enough, so someone decided to expand it. Instead of tearing down the half wall area between the two spaces to make a nice walk-in closet, they left it creating two awkward spaces.

Even more awkward was the positioning of the shelves and hanging rods. You couldn’t even get to the back one and the front one was at the perfect level to knock you right in your forehead if you tried to reach toward the back one.

Before unpacking all my clothes, I wanted to give this space a little more practicality. I decided that we should add shelves to the back part of the closet to put stacks of sweaters, jeans or t-shirts or pretty boxes for extra storage. I also wanted to raise the bar and shelf in the front closet so that I didn’t hit my head on it every time I tried to reach in for a pair of jeans.

I took all the measurements for the shelves so that we could go to get wood cut and buy some other supplies when Drew got home from work. A quick trip to Lowe’s and we had our wood and some screws.

We didn’t have any power tools either, so we also had to get a drill. On a side note, I don’t know what it is with Drew and older women, but he gets hit on all the time by them. Even when I’m with him. I asked this lady in the hardware store about a drill they had in the ad, but that wasn’t on the shelves. Drew walked up and she was in mid-sentence talking to him about the other drills that were on sale and she couldn’t even get a sentence out without having to stop and tell him that he had beautiful hair and eyes.

This project was pretty simple and only took about an hour or so to complete. We were sort-of lazy the whole time and really didn’t measure that much. I just had Drew hold the shelf up to about where I wanted it, we put the level on it until it was leveled, and I marked underneath it on the side walls for the supports. He made sure that the supports on both sides were level and we ended up pretty much right on every time.

Pretty soon we ended up with three shelves in the back closet. (we left the top one where it was already) Then we moved the front closet’s shelf and hanging rod up farther.

So much more practical! Now I have a walk-in closet! I have room to hang my clothes with storage on the shelf above them and then three more shelves in the back for more clothes and things!

It also makes the closet feel so much bigger!

It is easier to see the changes once there are clothes in it.

Even though the bar and shelf in the front are moved up higher, there is still plenty of room to store things on top of that shelf. It is nice to have tall ceilings!

Plus, because the clothes are up a lot higher, there is even more room on the sides to put in more shelving if I wanted to. This would be great to store other smaller things. Shoes, purses, scarves…

So much better!! But the fun doesn’t stop there! We still had another closet that needed our attention and this one was worse!

I forgot to take a picture of this closet before we put the first shelf in, but you get the idea. The top shelf in here was high enough that you wouldn’t hit your head on it and it also had a hanging bar as well. The problem was that this closet is less than a foot deep. That isn’t even enough room for a hanger!

See how small it is? I don’t know what this was ever used for, but it was completely impractical as it was. However, we really needed a linen closet to store all of our extra bedding, sheets, towels, rugs, tablecloths, pillows, etc… Since this closet is in the bedroom right outside of the bathroom, it fit the bill perfectly.

To keep this from being wasted space, we added three shelves and moved the top shelf that was already there down a little bit.

This one took a little longer, but just because the house is older and the walls were a little wonky and the wood length was a little tight in areas where the wall was bowed out. But in the end all the work was totally worth it. We wouldn’t have been able to unpack our boxes without this little linen closet. Look how full it already is! I’d have to say it was a pretty successful day and a pretty easy building project together. It is nice to see our little apartment already transforming into our little home. 🙂

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