Extreme Closet Make Over

Our under-the-stairs closet is a little over three feet wide by ten feet long. Large enough to fit at least two - maybe even three - orphaned wizard children comfortably, or in our case, tons of stuff that had not found a permanent home in the new house yet.

The previous owners' closet organization system, consisting of one lone 38" wire shelf with a rack for hanging things, was pretty poor. Our organization system of cramming our coats onto that rack while stuffing the rest of the closet with unpacked boxes, unhung pictures and a plethora of other homeless items was no better. Last week, I finally had enough of tunneling my way through the junk just to get to my coat and decided it was time for a closet makeover.

I started by pulling everything out which was similar to taking an air mattress out of the box. The stuff that was tightly packed into a fairly small space was now taking up the entire dining room, and just like an air mattress, you know there is no way you are ever getting it all back into that box/closet.

I have no explanation for the number of lampshades.

I pulled the lone shelf down and painted the walls with some light blue paint bought, but not used, for a previous project. Then I put up a Closet Maid organizer I bought at Home Depot on the long wall across from the door. I have two 48" poles going from it to the wall, giving us more than double the room for all of our coats. During this process, I did have to wonder how have people who live in a fairly temperate climate collected so many coats?  For me it is probably a style thing, and I guess Hubby is preparing for his dream cabin in Vermont.

This is where the lonely wire rack hung. Now there is room for photo albums, storage boxes, mail supplies, files and vacuum cleaners.

The shelf with the hooks was another thrift store find that I painted white. It is a great place for the take-the-dog-out coat, my picnic blanket scarf and the all important Georgia Bulldog scarf (both survived the great scarf purge of 2016).

I put up two shelves were the wire shelf had been. In the corner I placed a nice two drawer file cabinet that holds legal size files - very necessary for real estate agents - that I bought at the Durham Rescue Mission Thrift Store. Next to it was room for my two downstairs vacuum cleaners.

You can see in the photo that there are still quite a few unhung pieces of artwork stacked against the wall. That is a project for another day.

Before putting everything back, I purged - again. I was stunned to see some of the useless junk that made it up here from Georgia.  How many winter scarves do two people living in North Carolina need? Certainly not 17! I was able to cull down to nine. The same held true for mittens, wrist braces, entire packages of school photos (I kept about three for each year) and so on.

There was a lot of work, and a good week and a half of stumbling over the out-placed closet dwelling junk, but it was oh so worth it. If you are a person like me who loves nicely organized closets, drawers, cabinets and pantries, you know the feeling of joy I get when I open the door to this closet now.

It's a Holiday Wrap

It is eight pm on New Year's Day which to me means the holidays are officially over. Here is as rundown of the some of the highlights of our second Christmas in Cary:

• The most Cary-centric activity we did was the North Carolina Chinese Lantern Festival at the Koka Booth Amphitheater. It was pretty amazing. They build all of these displays out of lighted lanterns. The dragon was 186 feet long and sprayed water out of its nostrils to mimic steam. We lucked out to go on one of the few rain-free nights this December.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

•  My birthday is right before Christmas and Hubby gave me this sweet Mid Century Modern clock! 
  

• Comedian Son came from California and stayed a little over a week. I cannot really say he came home because as much as I love living in Cary, it will never be his home - it is just the place his parents and sister live. Georgia will always be home to him. 

• This is a photo of our beautiful Christmas tree. Please enjoy it because it is the last real tree we will ever have. We always had a fake tree until about four years ago when College Girl finally talked me into getting a real one. It was fine when we lived in the other house, but it was terrible in this house. The difference being hardwood floors. A reasonable person would think the hardwood/real tree combo would be better than having pine needles stuck in carpet, and that certainly is a benefit. The problem we had was ornaments falling to their deaths. I figure with a fake tree I can secure the ornaments better. Plus there is the lack of sneezing and hives too.

    

• Generally we spend our New Years Eves sitting at home, but this year we ventured out to see The Book of Mormon at the Durham Performing Arts Center. This was our first play since moving to the Triangle. It was very different than going to the Fox Theater in Atlanta. The Fox is an old movie theater and it is stunningly beautiful with an Arabian Nights theme including stars painted on the ceiling, but that old beauty comes a steep price or rather very steep steps with a serious lack of handrails. The seats are sized for 1920's sized butts, so a little tight for today's theater patrons. The DPAC is shiny and new, with comfy seats and safe stairs. As for the play, I enjoyed it but would not recommend it to anyone who is easily offended by ANYTHING AT ALL, because it is super offensive.  

So it was a great holiday, but I am ready to get on to the day to day living of 2016. I hope you had a great holiday too, and I wish you a very happy new year.

A Mid Century Modern Dilemma

My interest in mid century modern design really started when I began looking for a our new house. I was drawn to low roofed ranches with avocado green kitchens, and if I had an unlimited supply of money to sink into one,  I am sure that I would the proud owner of a 1969 North Hills ranch. Instead I am the proud owner of a five year old West Cary faux craftsman track home.

One of the great things about our newish house is the complete lack of decoration. There are no built-ins, no crown moldings, no chair railings. The most decorative thing is the mantel, and Yankee has promised to rip that thing out for me (a story for another day, I'm sure). Most people would find this a negative, but for me it just makes it easier to get that MCM feel I'm looking for.

Another way to achieve the look I want has been to load up on some nice pieces of furniture. One thing I have been searching for is a make up vanity for my bathroom.  I found a really fabulous piece at Gremlina Vintage in Fuquay-Varina, but while I debated buying it, someone else snatched that baby up. So I was again on the search until I found a desk on Craigslist that I thought might do, and the best part was the price - $30.

Yankee and I drove to North Raleigh to pick it up. The seller was absolutely the most hipsterish dude I have ever had the good fortune to meet. He lived in a tiny little hundred year old cottage that he had been renovating for several years. In true hipster fashion, he did not appear to be making much headway, but I digress.  We paid the guy $30 bucks and drove off with this:

In the  Craigslist photo I could not see what made this piece the true treasure it is. What I saw in the photo was a desk with nice MCM lines and drawers on the right side like I wanted but which were surprisingly difficult to find. I figured I'd bring it home, paint it and have a great little vanity.  When I saw it in person though, this is what I saw:

It has charcoal and rose Boomerang Formica! This was a really popular pattern in the 1950's. It is really cool and in pretty good condition too. The yellow top and edging are not it great shape though.

My dilemma is - do I paint it? On the one had I absolutely hate when people Pinterst-up MCM furniture. I see it all the time on Etsy and Craigslist. They will have a beautiful Lane Acclaim piece painted with gray chalkboard paint advertised as "Shabby Chic." It is really painful to think that beautiful piece of furniture painted and called shabby. On the other hand, the piece is the perfect size and style for my bathroom, but not the perfect color.

My bathroom is painted a light blueish gray and there is a lot of white in it. There is absolutely no pink. The pink in the laminate is very pale though, so not too noticeable. The yellow part is pretty rough with some holes in the top and gouges in the trim.

Last night I decided I was definitely painting it, so I took the whole thing apart to prep it, but I did not do any painting. It just feels wrong. I am considering just painting the yellow parts and leaving the boomerang. Any thoughts and/or advice from my readers?

On the inside, they used left over laminate. Now this color would be perfect in my bathroom.

This leftover piece is exactly like the counter top in my parents bathroom when I was growing up. 

Could the shape of this support get more 50's? I think not!

The two legs on the right side are wood painted black with metal caps.

The Royal Shower

In the two weeks since I last posted, we have done more unpacking, but sadly there are still so many boxes left to go. The good news though is our first major project in the house is done.

This house has many really great features such as a very good floor plan, large bedrooms and ginormous closets. It also has some pretty bad design choices such as putting granite counter tops in the kitchen with vinyl flooring. Seriously?!

Another questionable decision was in the master bath. It is very large with lots of natural light, an eight foot long vanity and a large linen closet - all good. Now for the bad - a two foot by two foot prefab shower. And when I say it is four square feet, that is the outside dimension. The space where you actually do your showering was even tinier. There was also a small garden tub that had a bad case of the uglies and that vinyl floor I mentioned in the kitchen? It was in the bathroom too. Yay!

 

I took videos of the house for Yankee when I looked at it the first time. I just watched the one from the bathroom, and the first comments I made was "that shower has got to go." I am happy to say it is gone and has been been replaced by a beautiful, roomy tile shower.

Because I have not taken a bath since I was nine years old (sitting in bathwater grosses me out), I see a bathtub as a floor space hog that must be kept clean, so I had my contractor, Jack Misnick, rip that baby out and make us a nice big shower. He and his people build me the most fabulous shower I have ever set foot in. Okay, I may be a little biased, but it is pretty great.

One of my favorite parts of the shower - the floor - almost did not happen. Well of course there was always going to be a floor since I have not mastered the art of showering whilst floating, but the floor was not going to look like it does now. I was determined to have marble tile on the floor, and I am sure that would have been beautiful, but it was soooo expensive.  Thankfully Krysta at Florida Tile came to the rescue and picked out the tile I have now. There is some marble in there along with blue, green and grey glass. It was a third of the cost, and I believe way more interesting than a plan marble floor would be. 

I had a pretty great shower in my Georgia house. It was one of those things about that house that I did not realize how nice it was until I moved to the rental. The rental shower had nice tile work, but it had a prefab pan for the floor that I really hated and the worse part was that it had no shaving ledge. I used one of those little plastic step stools which I was really happy to toss when we moved out. My new shower has a marble ledge that fits my entire foot, so I can shave away. 

Stepping into this tile and glass masterpiece is like stepping out of my real life and into some luxurious world that I am normally not part of. Sure I may have just come in from pulling weeds or scrubbing toilets, but while I am in this shower I feel like I am the Queen of Northwest Cary.

Painter's Block

When we bought our first house, we were coming from living in those bastions of  builder's beige walls - apartments and military housing. I could hardly wait to put color onto my new walls. I had  the paint picked out before we even moved in. I painted our dining room midnight blue, the living room forest green, and our bedroom burgundy. Trust me, in the early nineties this was the palette.

We moved to our second house in 1999, and I took a break from all that partying to paint my foyer eggplant and my dining room chili pepper. The family room was spring green and the sunroom had yellow walls and a blue ceiling. There was not a wall in that house that I did not make colorful. I was very sad to paint everything the same color when we put it up for sale.

We closed on our new house last Monday. One of things I so looked forward to about moving out of the rental was getting away from the taupe that covers every single wall. The New House has off white walls which is a nice, blank canvas to work with.

Here is the surprising thing - I just cannot get started. I have taken a tree's worth of paint samples from Lowe's and Home Depot. They are taped all over the house, but I have not been able to make a decision. I have owned this house for a week now and have not bought a single gallon of paint.

I clearly have painter's block. As a writer, I know how hard writer's block is to overcome. The only real cure for it is to write which does not really make sense, but it does work. I just sit down and start typing out anything that comes to mind. I often have to resort to writing blah, blah, blah when I am really stuck. Then I come back to that part later and replace the blahs with real words.

I think this what I am going to have to do in the new house. I want to paint my sewing room first because I am very anxious to get it set up, but since I cannot choose between the multitude of color samples taped on the wall, I am going to pick out a nice creamy white and just paint. If you know me, you know how bizarre this is. I have never willingly painted a wall white in my life, but I am pretty sure it is the only way to get my color flow back. The white will be my painter's version of blah, blah, blah. Hopefully I will be able to come back later with a real color.