This weekend we took over our first load of non-construction related items to the house! Although we've been pretty lucky to have the time to do most of our projects at our own pace, (which is pretty fast to begin with), we were all of a sudden in an all around time crunch this weekend to clear out our office in the townhouse.

You see, Mike's good friend Kyle has found himself between an apartment and a house and will be sharing our casa for the time being while he finds his own 'first nest'. I think everyone's acclimated to the change, everyone except his cat, Cabella. While Benelli is over the moon for his new companion, (there might even be a little crush), Cabella does not share the same feelings. I think we are making progress though, she's stopped waking Mike and I up in the middle of the night standing between us growling and hissing (think about waking up to that for a second, creepy right?).

A rare moment of them together.


Back to our Nest, to further prepare for our impending onslaught of stuff, we've taken to the closets. We knew (or I did and I politely convinced Mike) that we wanted storage solutions that could change depending on the room usage. For example, my office needs to have shelves for all my craftiness, but in the case of the room being used as a small bedroom in the future we wanted to have a system that could easily be changed to traditional reach-in for hanging clothes. Enter ClosetMaid at Home Depot. I haven't always been a fan, since I think the wiring and tracks look a little builder-basic, but they do have about a gazillion configurations somewhat affordable options for complete closet systems. I know after we stuff the closets full of our junk the not-so attractive tracks will disappear and all that will be visible will be organization.

Here's a look at the closet in the Office after it's organization overhaul:


The shelves can be moved to accommodate different heights or taken out completely to add a hanging rod.

The Master Bedroom closet would always be used for hanging clothes so we chose the permanent installation which also allowed us to add the neat quarter circle shelf which made the "L" shape to create a mini walk-in.


The Guest Bedroom was the trickiest closet to design. It will be used as main closet, so that we can use the room as a changing room and not disturb each other in the morning. The closet was large enough that we knew we didn't want to waste it on just one hanging rod. We chose to add shelves along the right side behind the register and two hanging rods for optimum storage.



I'm not sure how Mike found our iron, since I thought I did a sufficient job of hiding it at the townhouse, but he might be trying to tell me something.

Time for another reveal! This time it's the upstairs hallway. When we walked through for the first time, we knew we wanted to lighten up the area with some paint and uncover the floor beneath the carpet. What we didn't realize was the ceiling would need replaced, (along with some plaster patches along the walls), the trim would need stripped and a new attic access would be added. Here's the before, try not to get claustrophobic.


 
The progress picture with skim coat and naked trim.


And the after with a fresh coat of paint (SW Repose Grey), refinished floors, and new doorfronts and hardware on the built-in.


(Exhale), now that's more like it.

I work for a Construction Management / General Contracting company that also has painting and powder coating divisions.  Since I've worked my way up from the receptionist when I was still in college, I've worked in a lot of the divisions.  This means that I've got some perks.  I get a wicked discount at Sherwin Williams, (we do hundred's of thousands of dollars of sales there every month), and powder coating privileges.  Mike actually worked in the shop one summer when we were in school.  When we were looking at our original register covers, we knew we wanted them white, and knew powder coating was the way to go.

One of the benefits is they sandblast it down to the metal, (so much easier than striping ourselves), and then the powder is applied and a perfect coating.  They came out amazing, probably better then when they were new. Here's a picture to show you guys our gorgeous (like) new register covers: