We enjoyed a quiet, quiet, quiet night last night. Everyone slept in — until 9am!! We all were exhausted by the lack of sleep.
Paul and Kate are in the potentially losing battle against a bug. Will and I are tired, but don’t seem to be under any microbial influences, yet. So Paul didn’t juggle at the Children’s Event downtown as originally planned. Instead, I put him to work in the kids’ closet.
Before — just a sagging bar. One shelf. This is the largest closet of the three closets in the house (three total, anywhere — no linen closet, no coat closet, no utility closet — the study closet is tiny and the closet in our room isn’t deep enough for hangers to hang straight, everything is in at an angle). The kids have one drawer each for clothes and one bin for sock, undies and accessories… which cuts down on them having needless things that don’t use. But with it being the dual-season time of year, this becomes difficult. (Usually it means that we have bins from the upper closet storage on the floor for a few months… something I’m not willing to do right now.) So I decided we needed closet space for the kids’ stuff and craft/art/painting supplies (which are currently all over the house in various parts of every room, including the kitchen table).
Closet before:
Closet after. We need to find two more shelves for the bottom section, but we have to find a way to remove the pesky Shoe-Messing-Rugrat first.
My favorite part of the closet so far is that almost everything hanging up is a costume or costume accessory. (Will spent most of the day as Buzz Lightyear minus the boots — hence why they hang alone.) My second favorite part is that almost everything on Kate’s rack (and several on Will’s) were used things I picked up at the CCEX — including a new Talbot’s kids overall & shirt, a new Janie & Jack shirt and pants, and several adorable used jumper dresses and shirts. Great scores at the CCEX this year!
Andrew Kottenstette | 14-Oct-07 at 9:44 pm | Permalink
Hey! Paul’s a pretty decent carpenter!
I have no suggestions on how to get your little one out of her new cubby hole…except getting another one, or a cardboard box.
shokufeh | 15-Oct-07 at 7:28 am | Permalink
Great looking closet! Did you use prefab closet materials, or cut and paint yourself?
Cold Spaghetti | 15-Oct-07 at 7:49 am | Permalink
It’s the closetmaid stuff — which is why we managed to do it in a day and not our usual weeks-long timetable. 🙂
The 12-foot shelves that Paul actually built (one beside the closet in the kids’ room, the other in the study) are documented on Paul’s blog This Old Grouse (linked in local bloggers). He did those shelves around Mar-Apr-May 2006, before Kate was born. He hasn’t done much since! (No wonder!)
Andrew Kottenstette | 16-Oct-07 at 9:30 pm | Permalink
Still, they popped together pretty neat. Time perspective of projects, or window of opportunity changes when you get on the rollercoaster of raising a family.
I think my main client moved out of his older house just so he could fix it up. Then he moved back and fixed up the other one to sell. I can see why he hoped that the bigger one would have worked out, because he needed more room, but now he enjoys walking his son to school from the older house.