Productivity!

So tonight after writing my last post I got really motivated to get some things done! I decided to get the blog post for Friday written and posted ahead of time (very rare).

First, I sanded down and stained the little wine cabinet thing for the wine wall.

Before

After

Complete wall

Things left to do:

-Find a pretty hardware piece for the drawer handle
-Do something about the metal pieces on the side -- either lighten them or polish? 
-Add slits in the shelving area to hang wine glasses upside down like a real wine glass rack. (i'll leave one shelf for the stemless glasses.
-Get an anchor for one of the mounted racks so that I can finally put the bottles in the racks.

It's crazy that this is STILL in process. But it's seriously near the end now. 

On to the mudroom. 

I told you about the white piece of crown molding I painted. We mounted that and added the hooks. The hooks were really tricky to get on and into the wall, but it's all done!! 

Thinking about adding a decorative mirror or something above the hooks. That will complete this mudroom area -- like the inspiration I showed you guys from pinterest: 

Okay, so now that the entryway is almost finished, I'm finally going to post a picture! This is one of those other pieces of the house that's gone through 10 stages already and is still not quite complete.  

The black dresser thing is actually a shoe rack -- the one I found on pinterest and had to make mine no matter WHAT it took. It's so handy. We have over 20 pairs of shoes in there so all the work was worth it. 

It was so difficult to figure out how to position the shoe rack in that space. We couldn't put it where the hooks are because the door wouldn't open (it opens inwards, boooo). 

We couldn't put it against the wall opposite the hooks because there's a vent there and also because it would be taller than the main floor ledge (you can see it on the left hand side of the picture -- the light wood) which was just awkward! 

So we had to put it on the wall it currently fits against. BUT it was too big for that space. 1 it was going to be taller than the ledge that it now is even with and 2 the counter part of it was too wide and blocked the door from opening. 

Solution: We had to first shorten the width of the top so that it was flush with the sides. You'll notice the difference in the two example shoe rack pictures and ours (it's the same product, just ours is altered). Then we had to cut the legs to shorten the shoe rack. Finally we had to mess with the bottom left leg. You'll notice it's shaved down and not the same size as the right leg (you actually may not be able to see this since shoes are in the way). We also had to cut the crown molding to make it fit! Sketchy and his dad did an awesome job. They deserve lots of props especially since they had to deal with my ranting and raving about how stupid the dimensions of the house were and how much I did not want to return the shoe rack!

 

So here's a (bad) picture of the space above the door where I want to do the wall quote with a frame collage around it. I think it'll be pretty and it's a blank wall space that can be seen from all areas of the top floor! 

All we need for this space is the frame collage, some sort of decorative mirror for above the hooks and a little area rug for in front of the door. 

Now the last thing I did tonight (seriously... did more tonight than in the last couple weeks!). Remember the upholstered corkboard? It was nice, but it definitely needed a border. 

I got a cabinet door from IKEA's 'as is' section for about $2.50. Their as-is section is amazing for shelves or any kind of scrap wood you'll need for any project! I actually got a really large awesome piece for 10.00 which I'm going to try to turn into a headboard for our king size bed -- hopefully will have pictures on Monday of that! 

Anyways, back to corkboard border. I cut the existing corkboard and fitted it into the border. It matches the bookshelf perfectly! We moved it up a little to accommodate the white board at a perfect height for me while I'm sitting at the desk! May need to paint that white board border black so it matches the other things in the room! 

Anyways, I'm really happy with the results. 

Checked off quite a few small things from the to-do list! Hopefully we get some good spring weather this weekend so we can be as productive on the yard as we were inside last night! 

If only I can be this productive in studying for the rest of the day!

Happy Friday folks!