Painting the Closets and Office Trim

IKEA:
How's your week going? I've had so much fun reading the comments you left about your past excursions to IKEA. One tip I wanted to share about the best times to visit IKEA to avoid crowds:  try to go on a week day, if possible.  If you do need to go on a Saturday, get there early, as soon as they open, or late in the day like around 5:00 PM.  I noticed it was a lot less crowded come evening/dinner time.

Even though it was busy during the time we were there on Saturday, the crowds were not horrible. We never had to stand in a line to get in...just walked right in. It was busy, but you could maneuver easily, shopping cart and all. By 5:00-6:00 PM, the crowds had really thinned out a lot.  Even on Saturday, it was amazing how quickly we were able to check out the day(s) I was there. It runs very efficiently...at least the one here in Atlanta seems to.

Tablescape Thursday:
Tonight is Tablescape Thursday, so I'll be back later this evening with a tablescape. I hope to get the butterfly napkin fold tutorial up for either Friday or Saturday.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share what I've been up to.

Painting Closets:
I finally caulked and painted the new crown molding and baseboard trim in the office/sewing/craft room.

The closet off of the office hasn't been painted in 21 years...lots of scuff marks on the walls from an active, sweet little boy dragging toys and "stuff" in and out for many years.  Miss that little boy and wish he was still here scuffing up those walls.  Okay, I know he had to grow up and move out...but that still doesn't keep this Mother's heart from missing him.

Another view into Chip's old closet, now the office closet...

After:
I caulked all the trim, primed the brown shelf with a latex primer and painted it white.  Walls of the closet were painted the same soft yellow as the office, Duron, Sugar Cookie, which is available at Home Depot where it's called Sugar Cook in their computer. The broom is in there because my camera would not take a pic without something to focus on...and a blank wall wouldn't work, apparently.  I may eventually add some additional shelving...not sure, yet.

While I was in my painting craze, I decided to paint the hall closet, too.  I pulled all the linens out and just piled them on the floor.  I sorted through them all and created a donate pile and a use-for-rags pile.

Here's how it looked prior to painting.  I had already removed the top shelf before I remembered to take a photo.

More scuffed up walls and very poorly painted shelving. The paint job was bad, but the worse part about this closet, the part that drove me nuts, was the depth of the shelves.  The shelves have always been way to shallow.  If I pushed the shelves back, linens fell off the front of the shelves.

 If I pulled the shelves forward,

 ...the linens slid off the back of the shelves.  Why the builder allowed them to be built this way, I'll never know.  We are the third home owners of this house and we foolishly put up with this for 21 years.  I think it's finally time to fix this issue once and for all.

I stopped by Home Depot with measurements in hand.  They had these ready-made shelves and they were almost as deep as I wanted.  They were about 3/4 inch less deep than I would have preferred, but they were a huge improvement over what I had already.

The nice Home Depot guy cut the four shelves to the length I requested, saving me the hassle of doing it at home.  You can see how much deeper the new shelves are in the pic below.  The old shelves were also warped...so glad to see them go.

I painted the shelves the same yellow as the walls of the closet.  I would have preferred painting the shelves white, like the trim around the door, but I was getting low on white paint and didn't want to run out since I still had all the trim to paint in the office.   So that's why the shelves were painted "Sugar Cookie" too.

Here's the finished closet with the new deeper shelves all freshly painted.

Another view...

I had a LOT of help this day, as you can see.  Mr. Max wasn't too happy about all the chaos, but he somehow managed to suffer through and make the best of it. ;)

See you this evening for Tablescape Thursday!