Starting To Feel Settled

When we finished our house and moved it, it was very deceiving to call it "done". It's far from done. There was not a single shelf in the entire house. Kinda makes it hard to unpack and get settled in. Even some of the kitchen cabinets were lacking shelves. I had to prioritize my list and put Matt to work measuring and cutting shelving boards.

The shelving boards are actually the same exact boards we used as our concrete counter forms. They were half our countertop budget, but would have been a lot of waste to just throw them out. AND we would have had to spend a couple hundred dollars in new boards.

First on the list was the laundry closet. We chose to put in two extra deep 18in. shelves. No, it's not pretty. It's functional. Eventually, I might make it look nicer and more organized, but for now it works. I have more important things to do. And I can just close the door and not look at it.






Next, was the pantry. It's hard to function in a kitchen when you can't get to any of your food. I know, I know. I have a lot of food. But I swear it's all in date and I use it all regularly!






The lazy susans were free from Ikea. It was one of my purchases with the two $25 coupons they mailed out. Just one of the perks of having had two mailing addresses. You get twice the junk mail everyday, but when an awesome store like Ikea sends out free money, you get it twice! They work great for our cans!

The blue trash can is our recycling. It fills up about every week and we don't have curbside collection (for trash either), so we're collecting the recyclables in the garage and plan to start taking it to the collection center at the county dump. You can bring household trash for free if you also bring recyclables.

The metal can is paper recycling and the gray tub is dog food.



Third on the list were coat hooks. I was going out of my mind having coats hanging on the backs of all our chairs. These are just the coats we are wearing currently and frequently. The weather changes everyday, so we have each have a raincoat, fleece, and heavy coat on the hooks. There are even more coats in our closet.





I love these coat hooks. My long term plan is to do a board and batten treatment under this 1x4, like this.



We've done a little bit in our master closet. Just enough to function. Matt installed two long closet rods (one for each of us, plus coats).



We still need shelving in there for all my non-hanging clothes. And we need to figure out what to do with this space.



My mom got herself new bar stools, so we got her hand-me-downs.



When my mom brought me the bar stools, she also helped me paint the bathroom.





Since then, I've painted the $10 goodwill mirror and heavily distressed it. The old wood stain color clashed really bad with the golden oak counter.





Matt is almost done with the column of shelves in the corner. It will serve as our linen closet for towels. Once it's finished and painted white, it will really help balance out all the green.




So that's half the linen closet. The other half is bedding and blankets. Since we don't have a linen closet, I was looking for a trunk to go at the end of the bed for storage. My mom found one about 6 months ago and got it for me from an antique store.





I haven't decided if it will stay that color. I'll make that decision this spring/summer after the dressers get painted.

I also finally put on our new duvet cover that I got at WestElm.com



Not sure if the shams will stay. They might need to be our summer bedding when I leave the comforter bare white. I'd like to find colorful shams to put the accent up there instead of at the foot. The lime green fleece throw was $3 from Ikea.

Another big improvement are the slipcovers that I bought 2 years ago from J C Penney and have been dying to put them on. I never did it before because the slipcovers were too close to the wall color. It looked too washed out in our cave of a living room.





Matt got himself heavy duty shelves for the garage. They were partly Christmas gifts from my parents.



The rest of the garage looks like this:



Kind of a disaster.

And behind the empty boxes is all my stuff:



We still have to:

-paint kitchen cabinets (that's done actually! pics coming soon!)
-build a well house (in progress!)
-install water filter
-finish bathroom shelves
-paint bathroom shelves
-paint all doors
-sand kitchen open shelves
-install kitchen open shelves
-hang door on garage bathroom
-prime/paint garage bathroom
-build shelves in master closet
-petition to get our mailbox moved to our side of the street (it's a dangerous/inconvenient situation)
-make colorful throw pillows
-install plywood in "the cave" so we can use it as storage
-build bookshelves in office
-make office/desk functional

Hmmm...I'm sure I'm leaving off a bunch of things. But that's what's on our/my "urgent" list in somewhat of an order. Hopefully it will all be done by spring, so we can focus on the yard and outdoor activities like painting furniture and having a yard sale.