Love Your Wood!

Last month I was contacted by the good people over at Rust-Oleum Canada, asking me to take part in their Love Your Wood challenge. The idea was that they sent me (and 7 other DIY bloggers) a box containing a wood stain, a clear coat, five mystery items (which ended up being a hook, a drawer pull, decorative stones, wire and rope) and a $75 gift card to help buy any additional items we needed. Each blogger had to refinish a piece of furniture or build something using wood, stain and three of the mystery items. If you follow me on Instagram then you've seen a few of my sneak peeks over the last little while. 

For my wood I picked tongue and groove cedar and some pine boards and the 3 mystery items that I picked to work with were the rope, hook and drawer pull (we bought extra hooks and an extra pull). As we worked we also ended up purchasing 6 brackets and an extra Varathane stain, in weather grey, to work with. 

Rust-Oleum had provided me with the One Coat Coverage Ultimate Wood Stain in golden pecan. The stain covered wonderfully in one coat, and it was the perfect colour to put over my lovely cedar! It really brought out the beauty of the wood!

Hello beautiful golden cedar! It was the colour of the stain that led me in the direction of this wood, as I knew that would pair nicely. Sure enough, we had a beautiful result after just one coat of stain.

To be completely honest, I was a tad nervous about the clear coat they sent. It was metallic accent in silver and I wasn't too sure what to expect. I ended up being pleasantly surprised, seeing that the clear coat just added a really beautiful shimmer to both of the stains I worked with. I just went with the recommended minimum of two coats, and it was perfect. I'm sure if you added another coat or two, it would bring a much more metallic finish to the piece. I could see it working great on a pink dresser in a little girl's room - would give it a great shimmer!

Moving on, with everything stained and protected, it was time to get into building. I was excited to get involved since B is usually the one doing all of the building. The best part, this wasn't just building something, we were also transforming a small corner of our home! The wall right by the front door to be exact...

This too small table operated as a dumping ground for items when we walked in the door. When I started brainstorming for this challenge, a new functional front entrance space jumped out at me right away! It was time for ME to tackle it. We took everything away and I started by removing the baseboard (as you can tell, I was dressed appropriately for this part of the project).

Then things had to be nailed. I love using our nail gun attached to the compressor - makes me feel tough and useful. Unfortunately, no photos of this nail gun toting Mama. B actually attached some large pieces of scrap wood to the studs in the wall to make sure that when I nailed my wood in place it would be securely anchored to the wall.

The cedar was nailed in place first, followed by the side trim and then the top trim board. The top shelf first got nailed into our trim boards to make sure it would stay put, then I drilled pilot holes for the decorative brackets and finally screwed them in place. Our bench is secured in place using larger brackets, so again I drilled pilot holes and then secured them in place with screws. 

Our hooks went up in a very similar fashion, after being measured. I drilled pilot holes, then screwed them in place by hand. It took a lot longer, but I knew if I used the cordless screwdriver that I would strip the screws, so by hand it was. Once I was done B did go back over them with the screwdriver to make sure they were nice and tight.

By this point in installation Nolan had, had enough so I let B take over for the  installation of the rope and drawer pulls. The rope is attached to the corner of our pine trim and cedar using u-nails that he nailed into place. He then drilled a hole in the corner of the bench which he thread the rope through and nailed it into place as well. This was my favourite part of the project, I think the rope adds something to the bench, so it doesn't just look like it's floating off of the wall. The knobs I decided to use more decoratively (my initial idea was to have drawers under the bench, but that was too time consuming and complicated). B drilled holes only slightly larger than the back of the pulls and then pushed them into place.  

I honestly love how it turned out more than I even thought I would. It will be a much more functional space for us as we come in the front door to hang jackets and bags, and I may hunt out some trays for under the bench for our shoes to dry in the coming wet months (oh how I hope the rain will one day return). It's really perfect timing as Halle begins preschool next month too! I can already see her tiny pink backpack hanging here every day when she arrives home! It's a much more beautiful space overall, and I'm glad our top shelf can provide a safe spot for our artwork to sit (away from little hands), and we finally have a home to display that piece of driftwood B brought back from the island and carved up!

Now for some awesome before and after, side by side comparison shots!

Now for the fun part! There were 7 other talented bloggers taking part so you need to check out what everyone else came up with (I'm excited to see what was made as well). Then - VOTE! As much as I want you to vote for me (please, please, please vote for me!) you need to pick your favourite of the 8 projects. There's $2,500 on the line, and if I win, I'd like to renovate one of our bathrooms - preferably the master bath!

Voting starts today and ends on August 31st at 11:59PM (EST). You can place a vote once per day over on the Helping You Finish Facebook page - so make sure to visit daily to support your favourite project! Thanks so much for checking out my project! HAPPY VOTING and may the best blogger win!!

Nolan's Custom Closet

We are creeping up on Nolan turning 3 months, and still his nursery is not complete. We mostly just need to hang his bookshelves, remove some bins and bring his chair in. Hopefully I can share a complete nursery reveal soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to share the custom storage I had B build for his closet.

Last March we had tackled Halle's closet, using a lot of what we had to make the space more functional and tidy (you can read about her closet transformation here). A year on, we were so happy with how her closet worked, I knew I wanted something similar for Nolan's closet. What we started out with was quite simple, which didn't provide a variety of storage options for us...

Yup, we had a lot of work to do to get things looking pretty. So, B set to work building some custom shelving for the centre of his closet. He used scrap wood that we had laying around, and what he constructed is absolutely perfect!

The shelves provide lots of room to keep blankets, towels, extra crib sheets & mattress protectors as well as some baskets for his socks and hats (this boy has LOTS of hats!). Putting the shelves in also allowed us to add four rods for hanging. While this configuration doesn't exactly give us more hanging space, it definitely helps me to keep things more organized!

His baby book and first year calendar have also found a home in his closet. I'm pretty happy that I've been doing a decent job staying on top of both of them. The baskets I love, and picked up at HomeSense for around $10 each. I know once they have served their purpose in his room, they will be easy to use as storage somewhere else around here!

The hanging rods are actually 1/2" galvanized pipe that we spray painted matte black. The match the pipe that we installed for his curtains. You can read more about his nursery here.

It feels good have two of our many closets redone and organized. All of the rest of the closets in this house are also made up of wire shelving, which does not really do the best job at maximizing storage and organization. The next two most important closets? Our master bedroom and hallway linen closet! Maybe this winter will be our chance to work on those problem areas.

Do you have any closets that could use and organizational overhaul? Any of you working on major reorganizational projects this summer? 

A Little Closet Update

Here I am! Still kicking, though my drive to blog seems to have faded drastically. I think a lot of it has to do with my 2014 motto to simplify life. I've been enjoying the little moments with Halle these days. We finished her first round of swimming lessons together, we visit the library weekly, go for long walks with friends and the other day even enjoyed a nice lunch picnic! I've also focused a lot on sorting and organizing our home, and preparing much healthier meals for us.... and I even bake our own bread now! It's so nice and I've been feeling much happier and far more relaxed.

I am, however, hoping to get back on here and share what we'll be up to in the next little while - including our back garden plans and hopefully the built-ins in our dining room (we've been on the hunt for the right cabinets recently). In the meantime, I want to share a quick change we made in Halle's room recently.

I just felt like Halle's closet wasn't providing great storage for us. It had a lot of hanging space, but that big blank floor invited things to just get thrown down there, and the top shelf just collected items that were idly thrown down and then forgotten about. I knew we needed a better solution...

When I took that first photo I had already cleared out the floor space, so next I emptied that shelf and removed all of Halle's clothes. With everything out, it was as simple as B removing that wire shelf (that I was happy to say good-bye too... they seem to dominate our storage spaces in this house, and this is my first step to rid our home of them!).

Though I had originally hoped to find an IKEA Expedit for cheap to center in the closet, we found something even better. The open Hemnes Bookshelf from our old entertainment unit had found a home in our front hall a while ago, and was just collecting items that didn't have a proper home. The other week I realized it would be the perfect solution to add some extra storage to Halle's room. Along with some brackets (to anchor the bookshelf to the wall) and some closet rods from Home Depot, Halle's closet now has some better storage than before...

Overall, we haven't gained more hanging space, but I wasn't looking to add hanging space (we had more than enough). What this new configuration allows us, is an easier way to organize her hanging clothes, plus find better homes for the items that had previously just been tossed into the closet. We are working on potty training at the moment, so I expect that we should free up another shelf and a half soon and it will be a good spot for some extra toys, shoes, etc.

The top shelves currently home some special books that I don't want her touching without our supervision (like my Beatrix Potter books), and some special teddy bears that are also not every day toys, but my parents had gifted to me when I was younger.

We never did paint the interior of her closet, but down the line we are positive the carpet in here will be ripped out - so we could always paint the closet at the same time. 

This was a nice little project to get us moving again! Our biggest upcoming project will surely be our back garden. Halle helped B to plant all of the seeds in started trays and we have a number of sprouts coming up for our tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers! We're excited to see how this progresses!

What projects have you been working on recently? Or what do you need to get moving on now that spring has sprung? (Well, it's sprung out west at least!)

File that Under "O"

... for organization. Last week when I announced our big news, I mentioned how we never got as organized around here as I would like. Well, I have decided that in the new house I will not let things get out of hand and I will do a better job on staying on top of organization. It's so important for everything to have it's own place, and it's extremely obvious to me now with a little one running around and all of the other things we have going on.

Top of my list when it comes to organization is a great filing system, but sadly B and I have not yet mastered it. We are working on it though and are starting by upgrading our system from a plastic rolling filing cabinet, a basket of papers and a bunch of other papers piled on top of my printer and on the kitchen island, to a proper filing cabinet.

This whole process really started back in mid March when we picked up this sad looking filing cabinet off of Craigslist for free...

As many other projects seem to be going lately, this bad boy spent over a month hanging out in our Dining Room before we finally made a trip to Home Depot for some spray paint primer. Before we sprayed it, B did some light sanding on the rusty spots on the cabinet and then I got to spraying. We let the primer dry for quite a while (like two weeks - oops), before we took a trip back to Home Depot and grabbed two cans of Rustoleum Rust Spray paint in white. The body of the cabinet and the hardware got the white treatment, while the drawers got some chalkboard paint. With some help and encouragement from B we managed to finish this project up last week, and our old free filing cabinet is now looking a lot more pretty.

I wish I could get a better picture of it, but the house is in a constant state of madness as we pack everything up, and of course the cloudy days have returned, which doesn't allow for the best photos. The cabinet itself is looking lovely though.

We'll be able to write whatever we wish on those pretty drawers, or I can just leave them nice and clean - whatever I choose. Now of course the next big step will be taking care of the actual filing of paperwork.

We started going through some stuff this past weekend - shredding stuff we no longer needed and reorganizing some pre existing folders. We still have a long way to go before we have a really functional and easy to use system though.

How do you file everything? Do you have your stuff filed alphabetically, or do you file things in categories? What tips do you have for creating a fantastic filing system? I'd love to hear what you do to keep your paperwork organized at home!

Tackling the Storage Issue

The other week I shared some plans for our messy dining room. At the time I was being a little coy... and possibly lazy, and never shared a proper picture of our disaster area. So, if you want the ugly truth, here it is...

Yup... stuff... EVERYWHERE. And yes... I am extremely embarrassed showing this to all of you, but nothing like showing off a mess like this to get you motivated. It was not overly Christmas-y feeling and definitely not very organized or practical for a dining room / home office space - am I right? The worst part was this room was NOT hidden from view and is visible from the front hall, kitchen/living room AND the front door. Yup - this mess was on FULL display to everyone who came near our house, so it was time to take care of it. 

We're starting with baby steps and I'm being very budget conscious since right now we're focusing funds on our upcoming wedding. So, last Thursday we acquired a new piece for this space to help me to start getting things in order. Thankfully it was right in line with our minimal to no budget that we are working with to spruce up our space.

Last Tuesday I decided to take a browse through Craigslist to see what I could scrounge up as far as inexpensive furniture for our rather lacking home. I found a free 7 drawer dresser that looked like a perfect solution for our dining room storage nightmare. I shot off an email right away, telling myself it was probably gone as it had been posted the day before (and we all know how quickly free stuff goes on Craigslist). About an hour later my cell phone rang with the sweet, sweet news that the dresser was still available! JOY! After a little bit of back and forth, B headed over to pick up the dresser on Thursday night and I started cleaning up and organizing the room.

The above photos were taken on Thursday before we moved in the dresser. I've been working away since then, slowly getting rid of things we no longer needed, organizing and reorganizing and finding a proper home for all of the bits and pieces in there. There is still some work to be done, and our bins for Christmas decorations still need to be relocated back to the basement, but there is already a drastic improvement in the space. Check it out:

{Yes - first on my list once I have the space all ready to go is to hem those curtains. Drives me nuts!}

So what are my plans? Well first of all, we plan on repositioning the mirror so that it hangs horizontally instead, B just needs to change the wire on the back. As far as the dresser goes, it definitely needs some love. It has some scratches and paint splatters and other mysterious marks all over it.

I'm thinking I'd like to keep the top and the base of it this dark colour and then paint the whole middle section of it white. Maybe spray the handles black and get some new knobs for the doors on the bottom left. I won't be diving head first into anything over the holiday's, but I am pleased to see this little progress.

Do you have a room that is just a storage nightmare? Maybe you've started organizing a space yourself, or have added your own budget piece of furniture to your home? Or maybe, you aren't crazy like me and you are just focusing on your family and this wonderful season? Whatever it is you are up to, I'd love to hear about it!

Adding Storage

When we transplanted from our tiny Toronto home to our new spacious pad in British Columbia, I never imagined I would be having a hard time trying to store things in Halle's closet. After all, it was significantly larger than her previous one. 


Okay, so storage itself wasn't the main issue - it was hanging all of her tiny little clothes. This girl is a fashionista and she doesn't even know it, and the one rod (installed too closely to the top shelf), was just not cutting it for hanging all of her adorable little outfits...

Not only was there not enough room to hang everything, but half of her hangers didn't even fit properly over that single rod, making it hard to slide items to find what I was looking for. From the moment I started unpacking her clothes, I knew that something would have to be done about this situation. 

The top two things that I took into account were 1) it had to be removable and 2) it had to be inexpensive. With those two considerations in mind, it seemed like a no brainer - we'd use a tension rod. Perfect!

It adds that extra row of hanging space that we need, and the hangers that don't fit onto the top rod, slide easily along this narrower tension rod. I love that we have a ton of extra space to slowly add to her 12 - 18 and 18 - 24 month clothes as we find stuff we love for a great price (yes, the entire top rod is dominated by 6-9 and 6-12 month clothes... she has SO MANY).

Such a simple project, but the type of project we will have to become more familiar with, as we adjust to living the life of renters once again.

What tips and tricks do you have for improving and increasing your storage space for less? We're happy to take any and all of them at this point.

Tomorrow I'll give you a better look at how Halle's nursery is coming along. We're finally starting to get some things hung on the wall, but I still have quite a few decisions to make, and you all know that I value your opinions! 

Full Steam Ahead!

Last week we officially proclaimed our to-do list for 2012. With a lot to accomplish, and a lot of motivation, we got right down to business, starting with the first spot you see in our home - the front entrance.


The big closet thatwe put into our front entrance in late 2010 was meant to help with our storage and organization issue in this little ol' house. While it has served us well in the storage department, it hasn't been doing so hot in the area of organization...

Not pretty, right? It had been bothering me for ages, so I was happy to work on this one early on. My first step was to pull everything off that top shelf. I organized a basket of dog stuff, and the second held all of our scarves, mitts and other winter accessories. Any winter pieces we no longer needed or wanted were put into a donate bag. Our large collection of baseball caps was also sorted through - with one of B's old hats getting tossed in the trash and a couple going into the donate bag as well. 


With the top shelf under control, everything came out of the bottom and it got a good vacuum. There was one pair of old boots that went the way of the trash and a few pairs that went into our donate bag.

One thing that I was really happy about, was to get that old trunk out of the closet. It took up a ton of floor space, and with shoes just piled in there, it wasn't helping us stay very organized. So, to solve the shoe storage dilemma and clear up some floor space, we headed to IKEA and purchased two BISSA Shoe cabinets, which fit perfectly on the two ends of the closet (and at $30 a piece, were easy on the bank account)...

Each drawer is meant to hold four pairs of shoes, but since we had a few pairs of sandals and some of my flats, a couple of drawers held more than four and left us with some extra space for future storage. Clear floor space also means more space to store Halle's car seat and stroller. In the end, it makes me incredibly happy to see it finally looking nice and neat...

I'm loving that clear floor space! No more shoes just randomly tossed about on the floor. Now I won't be so embarrassed when guests come over and go to hang their coats in our closet. There is definitely still room for improvement, but things are already looking much better!

Have you started to tackle any projects on your to-do list? Maybe you've just been working on purging and organizing your home too? I'd love to hear what you've been doing around your home!

Nursery Week - A Repurposed Nightstand

First off, I have to thank each and every one of you for all of the sweet comments you have left over the past two days regarding our nursery projects. The room is mostly together now, and I find myself enjoying moments of just sitting in there thinking of finally getting to bring our little girl home. 


One of the other projects that B started and completed (for me) this past weekend, was refinishing an old nightstand that we had laying around in the garage. We had picked it up off Craigslist for free around the time we moved into our home (yes... about two years ago), and while it's dresser partner was refinished, used in our bedroom and later sold, this sad and lonely little nightstand remained untouched and cluttering up B's garage. Needless to say, B was more than happy to work on it and get it out of his garage when I told him I wanted to incorporate it into the nursery. So, this past Saturday, while I was out hanging out with my Mom, B pulled it out and got to work...

He got it all sanded down and the first coat of paint on by early Saturday afternoon! He was wasting no time at all. We decided that rather than painting it the same bright turquoise that we used for Peanut's dresser, we'd do this one white. Our plan was to place it just behind the nursery chair at the head of the crib - the perfect place for her humidifier and the receiver for her monitors - so we wanted it to blend it, more than stand out. 

To continue in the spirit of repurposing, we agreed to use the old black hardware that adorned Peanut's dresser before it went turquoise...

Once it was all painted up and dried, B moved it indoors and into place for me...

At that point, I used some organic surface cleaner and scrubbed the interior of the drawers, ridding it of all dirt and dust. With so many lovely gifts from family and friends, we needed the extra storage, so this little nightstand offered us exactly what we needed for baby blankets and changing pads...

As I mentioned before, the top is reserved for Peanut's humidifier and the receiver for her monitors...

Because of the white we used, it really does blend in behind the chair, and also gives me a place to set down a glass or drink during feedings or cuddles with our baby girl. Here's another look which incorporate more of the room to give you an idea of where we are now...

I had another project all lined up to share with you tomorrow, but I'm not sure that we'll have it 100% completed by tomorrow. There's a few finishing touches we need to put on it, but I should be back tomorrow to wrap up Nursery Week! Enjoy your Wednesday!