Done and Done

There are some great things about living in a little house. There’s less to mop. It’s easier to heat/cool. It feels cozy and close.

But there are also some not-so-great things – like the lack of functional storage.

It’s true that the Little House has more closets than any house of it’s age I’ve ever seen (four, if you include the pantry). It’s also true that despite the generous closet space the LH has (for a house built in 1940), we have way more stuff than they can handle.  That could be a clue for us to do a really good purge of our closets and donate a bunch of our unused extraneous stuff… or it could be a clue to build more storage.

Remember this little sketch?

It shows the storage unit Kev and I hoped to build at the foot of our bed. We used two skinny Ikea Billy bookcases with opaque doors and a Hemnes TV stand.

It looked a little odd with just the two bookcases sticking up, so we decided to add crown molding and can lights on the top. It wasn’t easy.

Finally, we found a YouTube Video, got the right tools, and figured that danged crown molding out. We slapped on a coat of Kilz primer and Behr Ultra paint in Creamy White.

Then we added three small can lights we picked up on clearance from Home Depot.

Their installation was super simple. Kev drilled three holes with a 2.25″ hole saw, plopped them in, and viola. Recessed lighting!

When the lights were installed, we brought it in, set the crown molding piece on top, and plugged in the lights (we’ll be hard wiring them later).

I love the way this project turned out. Kev and I have more storage for our clothes, we keep doggy toys in the baskets, I actually have a mirror in our bedroom, the awkward wall at the foot of the bed is taken care of… It’s just awesome. I smile every time I walk in the room.

We still need to hard wire the lights to a switch and I want to make a seat cushion for the top of the bench, but overall, I’m calling this project DONE!

If you look closely, you’ll see another bedroom project that’s almost done!

Have you finished any projects lately? Have you used Ikea furniture in ways it wasn’t intended for? Do your pets insist on posing in every reveal photo you take (there’s two pets in this one)?