Front Hall Heaven!!!!!

I can't express how completely awesome and talented my Dad is!!!!  As you know (from my past post) my Dad was coming this weekend to install our custom made front hall closet that he made!  I was super excited for it and it turned out WAAAAAAY better than I had imagined it in my head!! To take a step back I want to remind you that I more or less designed this baby.  I had an idea, I drew a ROUGH sketch. Then I gave it to my dad, who took my rough sketch and turned it into actual plans.  Then he built it!  He even said he spent more time on the plans than he did on actually building it.  The trick with this was that he couldn't just build it and then bring it into the house. He had to build it in pieces in his workshop so that it could then be installed at our house.  I still can't believe how amazing it looks!

Just to recap, this was what our front entrance looked like before.

We had a crappy 10 year old Ikea wardrobe and a white bathroom cabinet for storage. Lets just say the shoes were ALWAYS everywhere and the coats were permanently hanging on the stair banister!

I wasn't at the house for the entire installation process as Norah had dance class and we had to run some errands. But I came home to this. The sides and back had been installed.

Here is my Dad and Ryan installing the door frame and doors. They had a few issues as my walls aren't square and my floors/ceiling aren't level either. But with a little trimming and a lot of jimmying they got this baby done.

So without further adieu, here she is!!!  We have LOADS of storage up in the top cabinet for out of season items. Plus we have shelves up the side that I put baskets in to store all our hats, mitts, umbrellas, purses etc. We added extra glass door knobs that we had in the basement. Those knobs are on every door in the house so it was only fitting to add it to this door too! We did add the same knob to the top cabinet as well but apparently I don't have any pictures of it.... We still have to put the crown moulding back up, add some trim to the edges and caulk it all so it actually looks built in. But isn't she PURDY!!!

Here is the view from the stairs.

My FAVOURITE feature about the entire thing is my hidden shoe shelves. This was definitely one of my best ideas yet!! Since it is a corner closet, I knew there would be wasted space in the back corner. I hate wasted space! So I told my dad that it would be great to be able to store shoes back there if possible!  He put small shelves in the back that hold 1-2 pairs of shoes.  It just gives us that tiny bit more room maximizing the space!

Miss Norah definitely approves. It is her new favourite hiding place!  She loves that she can put her own shoes away and so do I!  I plan to put a hook inside just off to the right where she can hang up her own coat too.

Here is a before and after. I will update when we finally get it painted, trimmed, and caulked but its amazing how much better it is!! 

THANKS DAD!!!!!!

Front Hall Closet Part 1

I am very excited for this weekend!!  My dad has been working hard at our front hall closet and this weekend is installation time!!!!!  I'm finally going to have a FUNCTIONAL AND PRETTY front entrance!  Still no heat... but pffff who needs heat when you have a new closet!! (FYI new furnace comes Tuesday...)

So just to remind you, this is our front closet as it looks when it has been cleaned up... normally there are shoes and jackets EVERYWHERE!!

This is the problem area... As I said in this post the Ikea wardrobe I have owned for about 10 years and it was used in the meantime until we could come up with a plan. We had originally thought of doing a storage bench with hooks but have since decided against it as I want doors to hide the mess!!!  The white cabinet next to it is actually a bathroom cabinet we had in the old house in the bathroom (who would have guessed!).  We use it for Norah's mittens and shoes and my purse storage.  It worked but lets be honest it looks horrid!

As I already said originally we wanted to build a bench with hooks but we have too much stuff and I wanted to be able to easily hide it.  However, doing a rectangle closet wouldn't work with our stairs since the bottom landing is angled.  So we just sat on it until I came across an awesome idea on Pinterest here. A corner bench.  I still knew I didn't want a bench and hooks BUT the idea of utilizing the corner intrigued me.  So I searched further for a corner wardrobe.

That's when I found this. Yes it is an entertainment cabinet but the idea of a corner wardrobe just kept building in my mind!

I called my Dad and we talked through it. I measured the space and using excel I put together a SUPER rough drawing of it.  I knew I wanted a corner closet that went all the way to the ceiling. I knew I wanted the top to be a smaller extra storage cabinet for off season stuff. I knew I wanted there to be a shelf unit up the right side of the cabinet where I could put baskets with hats/mitts etc. That is what I knew. Everything else I left up to my Dad. He spent some time researching and came back with an awesome to drawing and got working on it.  It will be installed this weekend so I'll have an update for you next week but for now this is how it looks. The majority of the project has to be built in place but this is the door and frame as well as the side shelving unit.

This is the side shelf.  I am SO excited to see this all put together!!

Have a great weekend!!

Bedroom Update

Last week I wrote a post about the handles we painted. (see it here) Well I had time yesterday to install them all and clean up the bedroom a bit.  (the bedroom was a disaster!!!!) Just to recap we made our own headboard (here) out of wallpaper and trim. I still love it soooo much!! Isn't it pretty!!

I have been meaning to post these photos forever!!  Remember WAY back in this post when I showed a preview of the nightstands my dad was making us!! WELL they turned out better than even! The best part is that I found handles for them that are solid metal knobs for 62 CENTS EACH!!!!  I was so excited!  I ended up buying all of them (about 20) because they were just so awesome!!  The nightstands were made to closely resemble the oak dressers we inherited from Ryans mom. You can see the low dresser on the right of the photo below. Didn't my dad do an amazing job of matching the nightstands exactly!!!

Here is a closer look at the nightstand my dad made!!  Just another note, I picked up our bedside lamps at Bouclair for $15 each!!

And here is the low dresser with the new updated handles!! Don't the black handles look sooo much better!! I had also replaced the top 3 drawer handles with the 62 cents awesome knobs.  I forgot to take pictures but the handles up there were large hexagon brass ugly handles!! Just trust me they were hideous!

And a view of that side of the room.  The pictures (here) are temporarily hanging there that is why they aren't centered.  I am currently covered in paint working on a mirror project for that wall that is going to look amazing!! You can see my awesome chair that I am so proud of! (more on that project here)

The other side of the room with the tall dresser.  I think we have one of the drawers in the tall dresser that should be in the short dresser... can you see how the handles are off near the bottom. I will have to see about fixing that, I just noticed it while writing this post!  Anyway. You can also see my jewelry holder (see here). I want to hang it on the wall but haven't had a chance yet.

Finally here is my nightstand just to show there are two nightstands.

I am so happy with how the bedroom is!!  Now that it is much more organized I am moving onto other rooms in the house to update!!  I am currently painting about 4 different projects and have paint EVERYWHERE!!! Stay tuned!

Look What Dad Made - Porch Swing

Technically I'm a little delayed with this one. Over the summer/fall my dad took on the task of making my brother and sister in law a glider bench for the front porch of their new house. I can remember calling my parents house and talking to my mom and asking her what dad was up to... she would laugh and say he's out in the garage playing with his tools and working on the bench!! Oh he's so cute!

He worked so hard at this and it definitely paid off! Its gorgeous!!!!!!

I know my brother and sister in law are super thrilled with it!!! I would LOVE to have one of these... but I have no where to even put it!!! I do have a few other projects that I have been thinking about for this summer for my dad... we'll see!

LOOK WHAT DAD MADE - Tree Shelves

Last week while my mom and I were painting the kitchen cabinets my dad spent one day very busily making my tree branch shelves!!!! I was sooo happy with them I couldn't WAIT to paint them and put them on the wall!! That was yet another project that was completed over the weekend.



Enough of the chit chat... here are the shelves!!






Don't they look fantastic!! Ryan and I couldn't be happier, Ryan actually painted them because I was too busy and he couldn't wait to put them up. We'll have to get some more books, those were just some I had lying around. The tree is almost complete... all that is left is the owl hole shelf and the owl itself. But those will come much later!!

THANKS DAD (yet again!!)

To see other posts about the nursery you can go here, here, here and here.

Look What Dad Made!

This is the second edition of LOOK WHAT DAD MADE!!! My dad made this coffee table a month or more ago but my brother wanted to stain it with the help of my dad so it wasn't finished until last night.

The story goes like this:

My older brother and my sister in law had as a coffee table 2 Ikea Lack tables in peacock blue. They loved the bright blue colour of the table BUT alas Ikea tables aren't made to last. Their tables are similar to this picture before BUT in bright blue... apparently Ikea doesn't sell them anymore in bright blue because I can't find it on the website right now.

They wanted something similar to what they had (but instead of having 2 small tables together, just have one big table) but they wanted it made of real wood (not Ikea particle board). In came super dad to the rescue. Now this project was a little tricky for him because he had to find a way to make the table sturdy and not wobbly. But he figured it out.

The next challenge was finding a peacock blue stain in the right tone. I know they looked at the Minwax stains but they weren't the right colour. I believe they ended up going to Lee Valley (my dads new favourite store) and getting a blue stain there. I could be wrong about that fact though. Anyway, this is the end result! Doesn't it look awesome!!!! Ignore the dark spot on the table... after some initial fears that something had gone wrong with the stain they realized it was the shadow from the light hitting the table!! :-)

So there you have it, a wonderful bright blue coffee table!!! Isn't my dad great!!! Stay tuned for more 'Look What Dad Made'. We are going to tackle shelves for the nursery tree soon!!! I believe he has also been commissioned to build a porch swing for my younger brother and sister in law!

LOOK WHAT DAD MADE

This is the first edition of LOOK WHAT DAD MADE!!! First I would like to introduce you to my dad and my mom! Aren't they super cute!!!! Yes my dad is hanging in a tree!!

(Photo By Labour of Love Photo)

And just to be politically correct I thought I would add another picture because my dad no longer has a mustache.. after having it for longer than my mom has known him (she had never seen him without a mustache until last November when he shaved it off for Movember to raise money for prostate cancer.)

My dad is recently retired and with his spare time has taken on a bunch of woodworking projects. He started by building drawers for the pantry up at the cottage as well as a gorgeous wood box that holds the wood for the stove up there AND the DVD player (nice and hidden!!). On top of that he has transformed their garage into his own personal workshop! Mom is happy he is keeping himself busy with this (and of course golfing a few times a week) and as long as she can fit her car into the garage in the winter she is fine with his workshop!

Anyway, to get to the point. Ryan and I have been looking...wait I should rephrase that... I have been looking for the perfect table/plant stand for the little nook in our hallway. As you can see below we have a weird corner in our hallway that bugs me. We previously had a breakfast cart there but it was too big and cluttered up the hallway so we sold it. BUT its been a bare hallway for sometime now (we do have pictures hanging that aren't in this picture) But that corner bugs me. OH and to mention if you think the floors and walls look a little not straight, don't adjust your screen they aren't!!! The floor slopes to the back of the house in the hallway and the walls are a little bit wonky... that's what you get when you buy an old house!!

A few weeks ago I mentioned to my mom what I was looking for and they had EXACTLY what I was looking for up at the cottage in one of the rooms.. the only problem.. it was 2 inches too long and about 2 inches wider than I wanted. The width of that nook is only 9 inches... so finding a table to work in there is HARD as most tables at the very least are 11 inches. Then my mom looked at my dad and said "Why don't you build them something?" SO my mathematical dad made a plan in his head in about 5 minutes and got all excited!! I honestly didn't expect him to get on it so quickly as I knew he was going to be working on my brother and sister-in-laws coffee table. When he went to buy the wood last week he had to order the wood for my brother and sisters coffee table but since ours was being made of pine he just picked it up. Then he had time early this week to start our table. I didn't expect him to finish it in one day!!!! SUPER DAD!!!! He sent me an email Monday evening with photos of the finished product and his process. My mom took the photos of him working in his shop! SO here is the progress on our table!!!

Isn't it awesome??? Then Monday night he wanted to know what colour stain we wanted it to be. We decided to have it tie in with our french doors as we loved the stain colour. SO he went with a Minwax stain colour Red Chestnut.

Tuesday he stained our table and it looks like this!!! Isn't it fantastic!!!

We're so excited to put it in our hallway! We will be visiting my parents this Saturday and will probably get to take the table home! The only thing left to do is my dad is adding a few coats of varathane to seal it. When we have pictures of it in the hallway I will post them!!

I will make sure to keep adding more editions of LOOK WHAT DAD MADE as more of his projects are created! Next up is a coffee table and of course he will be helping me out with the kitchen cabinet doors this summer!!

THANKS DAD!!!!!!