Closets and Organization

In the hustle to finish the house at the end of last year, building out the closets in the 2 smaller bedrooms ended up being pretty low on the priority list of things to do in order to move in. When we moved in though, that meant that a lot of things didn't have a place to go. Both rooms ended up becoming the limbo where all of those things went.

After a couple of months of always wondering where things were and feeling a little frustrated that even though we now have twice as much living space as we have ever had, we didn't have place for all of our things I spent the last 3 Saturdays working on building out the closets.

I was able to use unused shelving from our Ikea cabinets from the house and from our previous condo for shelving in the closets and I was also able to reclaim some shelving that my Dad had taken out of his house a couple of years ago. I used paint we already had so the only expense and new product I had to buy was the shelf rail material. Both closets cost me a total of about $50. Had we bought a pre-fab closet product from a hardware store it would cost at least 4 times as much. Though it would have taken much less time. Since I have more time than money these days it was a good trade off. Plus I felt good about reusing things that would have just ended up in a land fill otherwise.

They are not as refined as perhaps they could be, but since they are in a closet I think I will be able to overlook some of the rougher details.

A big part of the clutter in the rooms were boxes and boxes of books that we had no place for so we went to Ikea and got a couple of Billy bookshelves and installed them on the landing.

It really gives the landing upstairs a much more lived in feel, which is nice.

Living Room/Entry/Stairs

It's probably about time that I continue on with the tour of our finished house. Keep in mind that when I say finished, I'm really just talking about substantial completion as I have a punch list a mile long to still complete. So if you see something that looks incomplete, I'm getting to it. Like the cedar slats in the front door canopy.

The door is a solid core birch slab. It has several coats of a marine spar-var finish on the outside. The painter said that we should never have to worry about it again.

The doorbell button is the True Illuminated Doorbell Button by Spore. We bought this and all of our light fixtures from lumens.com.

The mailbox is the Two Arcs Mailbox from Chiasso. I don't have a hammer drill so drilling the 4 holes in the concrete wall required to hang it took me well over an hour and lots and lots of elbow grease. And elbow pain.

Views of the concrete wall on the interior as well as Kersten's many knitting supplies and my prized possession, an Eames Lounge Chair and ottoman. We hope to someday have a really cool fireplace against this wall. We look forward to this day as winter nights will be very cozy and as it will also signify that disposable income has returned to our life.

George Nelson Bubble lamp from lumens.com.

Pay no attention to the slovenly fat guy on the computer in his pajamas.

Every time we move (4 times now) I keep hoping someone will drop my TV so that I can get a cool flat screen. Someday.

View of the upstairs balcony from the living room.

Exposed paralam beams that carry the second floor balcony and stairwell.

Before we finally got around to moving the piano out of our old place.

After we got around to moving the piano out of our old place.

1/4 inch stainless steel cable rail.

Pre-cast concrete treads.

Exposed paralam beam up close.

The Kitchen

We've been in for a while and are slowly getting settled in. There is still much to do, but we thought we would share the finished product as it currently stands. Over the next few days we'll post pictures of each room. So for today here are some photos of the kitchen and dining area.

The cabinets are Ikea in the Nexus Brown-Black with Klippig door handles.

The faucet is from the Danze Parma line in stainless steel.

The range is by Bosch and the range hood by Broan. We had to mount it lower than normal to get by some of the plumbing in the wall to vent it outside. That's why the chimney extension doesn't reach the ceiling. We'll probably get around to buying an extension kit as soon as we don't feel so broke from building a house.

The standard Ikea cabinet sizes makes the fridge situation tricky. We went through two other fridges before we had to redo the cabinetry so that this Bosch counter depth would fit. As you can see I need to do some modification to make the gap between the top of the fridge and bottom of the cabinet less noticeable.

The countertops are quartz from the Cambria Quarry Collection line. We had originally picked out a white quartz, but it wasn't in stock and we were on a deadline. So we picked another, which wasn't in stock, so we picked another and then picked this one based on a 1 inch square photo online. It actually turned out to match everything quite well.

The dining room light is a George Nelson Bubble Lamp.

Rufus, our favorite dog to dog sit was a nice addition to the house for a week.

Pantry door on sliding hardware.

We used Ikea Gorm shelving inside the pantry. We love having so much space for our food stuffs. Maybe now we can work on some food storage.