Main Closet Makeover

While our main bathroom renovation is at another stand-still, I decided to spruce up the closet in Dan's and my room. When we moved into the house, the previous owners had repainted everything except for the closets throughout the house. Mandy painted Kip's, the pantry, and main floor closets before or shortly after we moved in. And we just gave Ivy's closet a facelift a couple of months ago. That left our main closet and I was desperate to get it done.

Our closet is quite sizable and the first walk-in closet I've ever had! The shelving that was left by the previous owners was in decent shape so we kept it.

I organized our stuff in it after we moved in and left it alone, but the walls were really beat-up and it needed a paint job. I finally got fed-up enough with it and a couple of weekends ago, I cleared everything out, purged a bunch of stuff, patched holes, and painted the trim, ceiling, and walls. It was big task but Dan graciously gave me the time to do it while he watched the kids. 

 

This was our bedroom during the process. It always looks worse before it gets better.

 

Over the next week I applied a peel-and-stick wallpaper to the insides of the shelves. It's funny because in the process I had a profound realization. I mentioned before the Kip struggles with perfectionism and I couldn't understand why he felt like he had to be an expert at a skill before even trying it. Like, that doesn't make sense?! You have to learn how to use scissors before you can get good at cutting a straight line! That's common sense, right? 

Well, after my FIRST attempt at applying this peel-and-stick wallpaper, I got really annoyed at myself for being so bad at it. Like, I truly thought I was going to be good at it on my first attempt. WTH?! The mother like son...apparently he got it from me.

Anyways, the design of the wallpaper is inherently forgiving (as all the reviews said) so a lot of mistakes are disguised in the pattern - thankfully.

I got the hang of it after messing up multiple times. It took over a week to do because it required a lot of measuring and cutting and re-doing and I primarily worked on it at night after the kids were in bed. I moved one shelf at a time so we didn't end up with a messy bedroom for days. In the end, I'm really happy with how it looks. The closet is so fresh and clean now! The lighting is a little bit awful in these photos, but it's a windowless closet so you can't expect much.

I finally hung some stuff I had kept from the apartment but didn't have a spot for at the house and was too sentimental to toss. I moved a bunch of stuff around and even made myself a little faux vanity from one of my shelves (I love this feature the most!). 

Neither Dan or I have a ton of clothes or shoes, plus we have a dresser in the bedroom. The closet is about 50% clothes, 25% storage, and 25% unused space (future storage). I have bins in here for the kids keepsake stuff and we store our games up here and all my craft stuff and sentimental hoarding boxes. Extra winter coats, snow gear, pool stuff, extra blankets, kids keepsake baby blankets and quilts, etc. I kept our old hamper and hid it in the corner for using as a the give-away collection. We haul stuff to Goodwill regularly so now I have a place to throw all that instead of a pile on the floor.

Right now there is a bunch of stuff on the floor in the closet that belongs in our bathroom but we can't move anything in there until the reno is done. At this rate, I have no idea when that will be so in order to avoid moving everything in and out and in and out, it's just staying in our closet for now.

One other note, that small drawer you see in the photo above has been locked since we moved in. The key the former owners left doesn't work and so I've never opened the drawer. I wonder what's in there?? Sometimes I imagine it's cash. Other times my anxious brain spins off some wild crime evidence. What if it's kinky??? In all actuality, it's probably empty. How can we open it? Drill???