Life After I Do: A Week in Review: Coat Closet and End Table Makeover

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here's to Good Luck!

So, what's new in the Blackburn house this week? We pretty much took the week off from the basement. Just a few updates: We finished the hallway lighting early in the week and our fireplace was delivered! We couldn't wait to plug it in and we absolutely LOVE it. (sorry for the horrible picture quality but doesn't it look amazing!)

Anyways, with the basement on hold, we spent this weekend doing odds and ends.

First, I painted the coat closet in our entry way. We didn't paint any of our closets when we moved in. Probably because we were so sick of painting we thought, screw it, we'll just shut the doors. No one looks in the closets anyways. Well, that's true, but now I'm annoyed every time I look in the closet and its a mess. The walls were literally colored on with crayon and scratched all up.

First things first, half the stuff in the closet needed to be 1) thrown out 2) donated to goodwill. So I went through all the junk and threw some stuff away.

Then it was nice and clean. I wiped down the dirty walls and found the paint in our garage that matched the entry way and went to work.

After two coats and allowing it to dry, I hung the shelf back up and attached a couple hangers to the inside of the door for scarves.

I found cute (and cheap) bins at Target that fit perfectly on the shelf. I threw all our hats in one and all our gloves in the other. This hid the mess and also gave us a "home" for all those things that ended up laying around the house. I'm thinking about putting some cute labels on the bins so we know which is which.

Then I just reassembled the closet. Much better!

Next project: Most of our furniture is hand-me-down, which is great since it was FREE! However, it's not always attractive. So, for almost 2 years now we've had these ugly things in our spare bedroom. (They were my grandma's) I'm sure at some point these were the hottest ticket in town. Now, they just look dated.

However, I'm not going to go out and spend a bunch of money on end tables. So, why not fix up the ones I've got? They work great, they just don't look great! I went to Lowe's and bought a couple cans of spray paint and new hardware and then went to work.

After one coat they looked pretty good, but you could definitely still see the wood coming through. Luckily, it was a great day outside. After the second coat they looked great!

Although I cleaned them well and sanded off the glossy top coat, these babies have seen better days. There is some water damage on both table tops and it shows a bit even through 2 coats of paint. Oh well...