Closet of Clutter

My father's farewell present to Chris and I was what finally provided me with the ability to clear out all the extra random clutter that we had laying around the living room.

The downstairs closet is actually a pretty decent size space.  It had just one shelf on one wall and a long rod to hang jackets.  Since Chris hadn't been hosting dinner parties every week, he really hadn't been using it to hang coats.   It basically was the home for any random stuff that he didn't know what else to do with since there isn't much other storage in the house. 

I figured that since I didn't need to hang my coats down there either, we could continue using it to store junk, but perhaps make it a little more organized and able to hold more things.  Predicting in the future we may have some friends here to have over on occasion, I figured we should leave a little bit of space to put a in shorter rod.

Per usual, I forgot to take a picture before Papa John started work on it.  I tried to create one in Photoshop, but my skills are failing me on Chris's ancient version on the Mac and I don't want to switch to my computer to access CS5 for the cheater's method of cloning.  So no before photo, I apologize.  I think everyone has the skills to imagine what I described earlier, though, so you can still be amazed.

Here are a few I nabbed of it once all the junk was clear and Papa John had gotten all the shelves created.  He re-purposed the boards taken down from the upstairs master closet.

Lots of junk spilling in the dining room

 

All re-purposed wood

Notice the all tan still in there.  Blah.

This closet was done the Sunday before Papa John left.  He got the entire thing built, caulked, and primed before he left!  He would not quit even though Chris and I kept telling him to stop.  He finished painting at 11pm.  That man is a work horse.  I kid you not, the next day he got home to P-town at 1pm and was out mowing the lawn within an hour!

So feeling like I had some big shoes to fill, I took it upon myself to finish painting the ceiling, trim, shelves and walls all in one day too.  Why not?  Even got the rod and broom hooks put in that night.

Here is the beautiful finished product.

So purty

Much more shelving space

New hooks for the broom & swiffer

The rod we removed from this closet was actually taken out before to reuse in the upstairs closet.  We used one of the shorter rods from the upstairs and cut it down even more to fit in this one.  Gotta save those pennies everywhere you can, right?

In fact this whole project was approximately $15.  Oh and some manual labor.  Which I repay with my love.

And here is one to prove that all the junk now fits!

All nestled in

We may have so shift some things if we really need to hang a few coats, but I'm not too worried about it right now in the 95 degree weather. 

Downstairs painting complete!