Hall Closet Work Continues

Happy Sunday, folks! This morning, after a pretty busy Saturday (which I'll blog about soon), we went into town to pick up a few more things for our hall closet project at Lowe's. 

One thing we needed was a transition piece for the doorway of the closet, where the closet flooring meets with the hallway floor. Both floors are wood, and pretty similar colors, so we knew we wanted a wooden transition piece, but it wasn't easy choosing the right one!

There were so many different styles, and our space is kind of tricky, because the floors are unlevel, so we think it will be a little difficult fitting the transition piece into the space. We chose one we think will work well, though.

While we were at Lowe's, we also picked up the last sheet of drywall we needed to finish the walls of the closet. We used a thinner drywall for the closet walls - 3/8 inch, to get the most room we could out of the small space. 

Trent worked on finishing the walls this afternoon, and we now have all of the drywall up and are ready to start mudding!

It took not quite 2 sheets of drywall to finish the walls. Now the next step is mudding over all of the screws and the cracks where the pieces of drywall meet. Then sanding it all to perfection!

We'll also try to fit that transition piece we got into the doorway where the 2 floors meet. You can see from the photos that it's pretty unlevel, so we'll see how that goes! And then we'll need some small trim for the inside of the closet just to create a seamless transition between the floor and walls.

Another thing we've done is changed the door hinges out. Before, they were the gold hinges that came with the door, and Trent switched them to white ones to blend in more with the door and trim.

It's just a little detail, but I feel like these hinges are a little more "low profile." They don't stick out like sore thumbs anymore!  

So, that's where we're at with the hall closet now that we were finally able to pick up some more supplies. Hoping to share a little about what else we did over the weekend, as well as how we're spending our Valentine's Day soon! Have a great night y'all!

Hall Closet: Getting a Floor and Walls

Yesterday, we started working on our hall closet again. We're hoping to get it finished soon! It only had a subfloor and some framework when we started yesterday afternoon, and then Trent laid the wooden floor:

It's a floating floor, so no nails required. The wood panels "lock" together. We got a set from the Habitat ReStore a few years ago and finally got to put them in! It didn't take too long for Trent to get the floor down, since the space is super small.

Then he started on cutting the drywall and screwing it into the studs. He got the walls about halfway up before he stopped for the night.

I think he did a pretty good job so far. It feels like some good progress for just one day!

It's cool to see this little hall closet coming together. And after taking a break from working on the house for a while, it's also pretty satisfying to start another reno project and see the space taking shape.

So what's next? Well, after the walls are all up, then the cracks and nails will need mudded and sanded. We'll also need floor trim and a threshold put down in the doorway. Then we'll prime and paint the walls and ceiling, and install some shelves.

I can't wait to store my towels, vacuum, and cleaning supplies in an efficient manner for once! Progress is nice. :)

Hall Closet Work in Progress: The "Before"

A little over 5 years ago, in 2011, we put a new hall closet. It's a tiny closet, but we wanted to utilize this wasted space to store our vacuum, brooms and mops, and maybe some towels and cleaning supplies. Since we first put it in, it's been unfinished, but we've still been housing some of these things in it nonetheless. Here's that space as it looks now:

We decided to start working on finishing the closet this month. So today, I cleared it out, and Trent has been starting the floor.

I took some "Before" photos, and we hope to make significant progress in the next couple of weeks. I'm glad it's starting to move along today, and I can't wait to see our finished closet! I have some Pinterest-like dreams in my head for it.

Here's the full closet, top to bottom. I had to stand on the steps to take these photos and actually get the whole closet in view. :)

Here's the subfloor - We're now putting in a floating wood floor with some flooring we got super cheap at our local Habitat ReStore a few years back.

We picked up a sheet of drywall at Lowe's yesterday; I don't think it will take much to finish these walls. The space is so small.

I'm hoping to share some in-progess pictures soon, and will keep you updated on the closet reno!

Life in 2017

It's a nice Sunday today - not too incredibly cold, and no bad weather yet - though it's supposed to be coming! I thought I'd bring you all up to speed on what we've been up to so far this year, and where we're headed.

So far, 2017 has been pretty great, but nothing too terribly exciting. We've been making a few trips up to the cities so far this year. We went shopping last weekend and got new phones. Then this weekend, I had a tire light on in my car and found out I have a tire sensor that needs to be replaced, so I had a car appointment yesterday in the Cities to figure out what was wrong, and we'll have to go back next weekend, to get it fixed. While we were there, we did some shopping, took advantage of the after-Christmas sales still going on, and have gotten to eat out a couple of times.

Last weekend was Texas Roadhouse - Love that place. Then this weekend, we ate at Crust again. Remember those amazing beer-battered cheese curds? Definitely the best cheese curds ever. We got those as appetizers, and were so full after that we could barely eat our pizza! :)

We also tried a couple of beers there. I got a Lionstone Peanut Butter Wheat beer. I tried it one other time before - it's locally brewed in Geneseo, Illinois, and it is delicious! Trent got a Cherry Blond ale from Great River Brewery (also a local brewery), and he liked that, too.

Friday night, Trent got some pizza from the place down the street from us, and Saleen clearly wanted some of it. She couldn't leave Trent alone while he was eating it. It was pretty cute. :)

She can't resist that pepperoni pizza!

Today we've been cleaning - doing laundry, dishes, and mopping the floors with our new Swiffer Wet Jet! We've gotten a few other new things for around the house lately, too. I bought a new wine rack, some new wine glasses, and a bathroom scale with my Target gift cards from Christmas. This is the first scale we've owned in the 6 years we've been in this house! It was pretty exciting. :)

Then yesterday, we got new pillows for the bed from Bed, Bath, and Beyond - here is the link to them online. They are pretty fancy - kind of tempur-pedic, and have a special cooling gel inside. Last night was our first night sleeping on them. Not too bad! My neck has been hurting when I wake up, so I needed a new pillow that was a little better for it. I hope this one helps!

In the way of renovation projects, I think our first one is going to be finishing the hall closet. We put it in when we renovated the hallway, but haven't finished it yet. Here's a look at the closet after we put it in:

It still needs drywall, a floor, and some shelves. It's small, but I think having it finished will help us be a little more organized. Plus, we'll have a nicer space for our vacuum, the Swiffer, and our bath towels.

So that's how our 2017 has been going so far in a nutshell. I'm hoping to start some renovating soon!

Hallway Renovation: Part 2 - Closet and Lighting

In My Part 1 Post of the Hallway renovation, I left off in the fall of 2011, after we had demoed the hallway and added a door to the bedroom. Then we Painted the Stairs. But after most of the demo work in the hallway was done, we had to begin rebuilding, restructuring, and problem solving - because we had lots more work to do.

With most old houses, there are going to be structural issues, and our hallway was no exception. As I've mentioned before, one of the many problems in the renovation process with this house always lies with the foundation, which needs to be partly rebuilt. The broken foundation makes some parts of our house literally not level. The unevenness in the hallway was something we had to work around as we went. Example: When cutting drywall, do we cut it "actual level," or "house level"? Most of the time, we just had to go with what looked right to us.

As you might remember, we tore out the wall that made up the back of a closet in the next room:

We currently had no use for this closet - it was in a weird location next to the water heater in what we call "the back room" - where our dog Saleen lives most of the time. So we had an idea: Why not make the closet face the OTHER way, and use it as a linen closet / cleaning supply storage? Brilliant!! So our next task was to create a new closet. 

By the end of 2011, Trent had framed the new hall closet and wall, and installed the closet door:

The next step was electrical. In early 2012, Trent installed 4 new lights in the hallway (There were 0 working lights in there before):

• 1 light inside the closet, with a corresponding on/off switch on the wall. 
• 2 recessed lights in the ceiling with a corresponding dimmer switch on the wall.
• 1 main hallway light in the tall part of the hallway (by the bedroom and bathroom), and a corresponding switch on the wall.

Here's the closet light - for the fixture, we just used a light we already had on hand:

You can see the ceiling in the closet is slanted. We did this to make full use of all of the closet space, since it is a very small space. We figured, why not use all of the possible space we have to work with?

These are the two recessed lights we installed on the ceiling. (We started putting drywall up, too):

And here you can see two of the light switches we installed:

The one on the right is the dimmer switch for the recessed lights. The left one next to the closet door is the on/off switch for the closet light. We use them all the time and are really happy with the placement and everything so far.

Here's the final light - In the tall, squarish portion of the ceiling, at the end of the hallway:

You can see that we also started putting in insulation up there, and Trent did some extra framing work and fixed the leaking problem, too. It's partially because of all these little extra details and complications that this hallway has been such a project!

Even picking out a light fixture proved to be more difficult than we expected. This is actually the light we had originally picked out for the hallway:

See how it hangs in front of the door that would become the new bathroom door? We ended up taking it back to the store, because even though we really liked the look of it, it just hung down too far and didn't look right in the space. 

We chose this one instead because it looked modern, and it was flush to the ceiling:

Just look at that glow :) We got the light from Lowe's and really like it so far. It looks even better with actual drywall on the ceiling, as you might imagine. I'll hopefully have pictures of the finished product soon!

After the lighting, we had another small project: 

Ya know that door that had been leaning against the wall at the end of the hallway? Well, that would become the new door to the bathroom. As I said before, the only entrance to the ONLY bathroom in our house was through the bedroom, which made it a little awkward for guests. So we wanted to move the door to the end of the hallway, which naturally makes sense, don't you think?

Stay tuned for a post all about this tomorrow! I'm all hallway-ed out today! :)