the great closet unveiling

If you see me frequently in person, you know that CJ had been working on our closet for quite some time, as part of this whole domino-effect home improvement scheme we planned in the summer.  To pre-empt some of your questions, things didn't exactly work out as we planned and we're now a month behind schedule.  Here's the whole story in pictures:

We have a small master "suite."  It's so small, it really shouldn't even be called that.  But it does have an attached bathroom and a nice walk-in closet, so I suppose the description fits.

Long story short, we had this big dresser in our bedroom and another matching, large dresser in our closet.  Neither was big enough to hold our clothes and our closet didn't have any organization.  So we decided CJ would build a closet system.  Then we'd sell the dressers, get organized, and I'd feel less stressed out about constantly having a mess in my house.

Okay, I'll admit that probably 95% of this mess is caused by a combination of having too much stuff and being lazy about cleaning and organizing.  That's beside the point.

One day I came home to find my entire closet had been gutted - floors, clothing racks, shelves, everything.

This photo was taken in the very beginning when it was still fun.

Actually, I think I took this picture mere minutes before I told CJ the entire closet had to be repainted before we got any further.  The fun went downhill from there.

This is just one snapshot of where our clothes went.  See those bags down there?  Those are holding my shoes.  (Not.  Cool.)

The cats are the only ones who seemed to enjoy the messy house since it's easier to hide.  Can you find Stella in this picture?

As you can see, two weeks after the initial gutting, some progress was made...

And this is the finished product!  Well, almost finished product.

Three or four weeks later, I finally got to start to move our clothes back in.

CJ still has to build drawers here so it won't look permanently messy.

And -- you can all breathe a sigh of relief here -- some (note: some) of my shoes have a home.

So what's left to do?

As you could see, we're down to the cement floors, so obviously, new floors need to go in.  And once those go in, we need to put new trim in.

None of that's probably going to happen until I can choose a darn paint color for our bedroom.  Then we need to paint, rip up that carpet, put in all new floors, and put in all new trim in the suite.

Check back in like January of next year once CJ's out of school and we finally -- finally -- get our act together with the home improvements!