16 August Featured Space: Bedroom - Conquering Closets {part 1}

One of the main things that majority of bedrooms hold, is a closet space.  Whether you sport a wardrobe or a walk-in, clothing storage is key.

As I have been chatting about lately, we are switching things up around here, in the bedroom department!  That means that we are moving our middle P into our little P's room for them to share, and our oldest P is getting his own digs.  And I originally mentioned that we were going to be revamping our guest suite to be more guest friendly, however, with the recent flood, that's a whole new story.  The water damage downstairs forced the hubs and I to move out and up, and we are now temporary guests in our guest suite!  When I say temporary, I mean like months upon months until we decide to redo that basement space...

With all this movement, we have been recently tackling clothes and closet storage, one space at a time.  I already gave you a glimpse at the closet in our little men's new room:

Wondering where their clothes are?  Well, remember here when I chatted about their clothes storage?

So knowing my munchkins are total dresser kids, that leaves their closets available for other storage!  WAHOO!  I get weirdly excited about things like that....

When it came time to focus on our older P's closet, we removed all of the kiddo's belongings, leaving us with a blank slate, literally!

As I did with the other boy's room, I slapped a quick coat of white paint onto all of the trim!  The results were speechlessly better!

So then I put the kid to work!  It is his room after all! {Ok, so he actually followed me around BEGGING to paint, so of course I let him!!}

He painted the inside of his closet the same color as the main bedroom wall color.... with help from mama of course!

Quite the transformation with the love of some paint!

And what do we have up our sleeves for this fun little space?  That my friends is for another day!!

But we didn't stop there with conquering our closets.  As I mentioned, it was time for the hubs and I to take over the guest room, which also doubled as a ton of our storage space!  Remember how I stored all of my craft stuff?

That all got moved out, of course I have a plan!

The old guest closet was actually a set of two, so we thought that since we not only lost our master bedroom and walk-in closet, but we also lost our home office, that we needed to re-create those three zones within our new space.  So one side of the closet will be used to store our clothes, and one side will be our new desk space!

I could have just popped a desk in the closet and called 'er done, but I actually couldn't.  I am a huge believer that when you love the space you are in, you are more productive and likely to keep it organized and fantastical.

So, once again, I broke out the paint.  But I was going for something different.  I hearted my old office space oh so very much, and was going to try my hardest to recreate an equally great workspace.  With the help of a borrowed projector, I projected a floral pattern up onto the wall {the same one our old desk was wallpapered with}:

And then using a small craft paint brush, I followed the lines of the flowers:

What you can't see from this picture, is that I was attempting this on a primed orange peel wall treatment.

I will just say, I will absolutely try this again on a flat wall.... but three hours in on orange peel, up close it looked sloppy and I was sad on the return of time investment.

Time for a new plan.

I decided if I was going to do it, to do it right.  Everything was already in crazy chaos mode due to the basement issue and the switching of the boys room.  Why not just go with it?!  So, I painted the trim white in our new room/closet as well!

I also painted the rest of the walls in the closet the wall color from our original master bedroom.  But not the main wall.... why?!

Because I splurged.  I broke down in a moment of weakness.  I think with all the ups and downs I was feeling about losing our loved space downstairs, that I was going to make my new space shine, I was going to make it something that will bring a huge smile to my face each day, I was going to make it magical....

So I added this gorgeous wallpaper!  And it was worth every non-regrettable cent I spent! {Hey, I tried to go the cheap route first, and in a rush to get things done, this was the perfect decision for us!}

In fact, this was WAY better than the first fail.  I was dancing.  I was smiling.  I was hugging my husband.  It was seriously a long time dream come true for me.  White trim plus gorgeous wallpaper equals my biggest decorating fantasy come true!!

Well, that is until I stopped spinning my smiling circles to take a moment and admire it again, only to quickly feel my heart sink to the endless pit of my gut!

This was our very first time wallpapering walls.  Yes, we had put some on our desk once before, but that was nothing compared to this.  And we weren't sure where we went wrong, but after quickly running to the home improvement store for some new supplies including wallpaper paste and a seam roller, we were back in business, and able to salvage all the the paper that didn't stick right the first go around!  Whew!

So now we were able to go from this:

To this!

Please forgive me, but I can't help but do some continuous swooning over our before and after side by sides!

Next it was time to start putting the closet in, so that we could stop living out of laundry baskets and back to living off of hangers.

We did measurements to account for our sleeve lengths and shoe storage and baskets, and ended up with a tall divider shelf {for in between the new desk space and the closet space} and two racks for our clothes:

Allowing us to completely maximize every inch of the itty bitty closet space!

So what do you think?  We had never painted our closets before, they were always just stock primed walls.  Now that I know the difference that a little paint can make or the dramatic awe that I am still in from the wallpaper transformation, I believe a new trend is born here in the Jones abode.  Who else is with me here and gone so far to decorate inside their closets?  Anyone have to give their vision a few tries before they got it just right in the end?

And how are we managing from a walk-in closet to a tiny closet?  More on that to come!