Coming out of the Closet

so, when we moved into our lovely new house,

(see to the right) the closet in our bedroom was a mess of peeling wallpaper and a yellow laminate floor.

now since we knew we were gonna have to redo it, we thought there was no use in unpacking all of our clothes there...but weeks went by and i just never got the time to do it...and the boxes of clothes just sat there so it looked like we had just moved in last tuesday.

well, something had to be done! so, we decided to put Erin and Vera on the project. turns out that even though ripping down wallpaper may seem to be the funnest thing in the world to do, the children soon grew bored with it. finally, no amount of threats and revoked saturday candy could persuade them to do anymore. in the face of this family revolt, i stepped in and ripped up the vinyl floor to see what was under it. here you see the progress up to that point.

quite a big room, yes? to give you an idea of how big it is...there are 3 of these closets on the second floor. 1 in our room, 1 in vera's room and one has been converted to a tiled jacuzzi room. yes, a jacuzzi! when you're done being envious...let's get back to the point. the point being all the hard work i put into this project.

so...seeing that the sun wouldn't rise without my kicking it in the arse and the closet wouldn't fix itself without the same incentive. i proceeded to really get to work on it. i pulled down all the easy to reach wallpaper and then started the real work...taking a paint knife and scraping all the sticky residue and scrapes of wall paper off. being patient like a creeping glacier, i worked by sections and slowly but surely(with the liberal use of a small water spray bottle to loosen paper) i finished and was down to bare wood!

the whole room was wood, lovely planks on the walls and wide pine planks on the floor. tilda had already bought the paint supplies we needed so i began painting on the special base coat. which is supposed to make the wood more of a better surface for the final coat to get a grip on. hmmm...anyway, i painted and i painted and i painted. the top arch of the ceiling was a bit hard to reach so i brung in the monstrosity(i'll add a pic of it later) a BIG clunky wood contraption that the previous owner had left us...think of a regular carpenter's saddle and add a small platform on top. i magicked it through the door that was half as wide as it was(ah...the joy of being a former mover) and then climbed up and twisted my head half off to be able to paint the top.

then, you say, then i was finished, right? well you'd be wrong if you thought i'd do a half-arsed job. now was the time to sand the very worn floor. it had probably never been done in the 106 years since the house was built. scroll back up and notice it again.

well, i got out my handy black and decker sander(it had already served me well and proved it's worth when i undertook the project of "the formerly brown, brown cabinet"(a tale for a later blogg)). i closed the door as tight as i could and put on an air mask(that despite the name let's in surprisingly little air) and cranked up the sander. man! i tell you what, in that enclosed area it was LOUD! quicker than i thought possible, i was done! magnificent, the floor looked. such a lovely pine floor.

but, STILL not done. cuz though the floor might look nice now and for a year or 2...eventually it'll start getting worn again. in comes the floor protecting glaze. 2 coats of that and man...the rich luster and color of the pine REALLY came through!

done? not by a long shot! yes, i had created the perfect closet. beauty squared and god wept and all that...but where were we gonna put all our clothes? so i got out and found all the crappy shelves that were in there before and repainted them white(instead of the worn au natural that they were) and rehung them. plus i added the shelf system that we used to have as a wall shoe shelf rack for tilda's million and 2 shoes in the old house.

now...you wanna see the finished product? do i have to shake you awake after all this boring text and not even one half-nekkid women to keep your interest? ok here it is!

now i notice that in that video, the shelves are not up and the floor is unglazed...but despite my reapeated efforts and many foul curses...i couldn't get the new pictures to appear anywhere but at the top of the post. if you scroll up you might notice my attempts, small odd pixels at the top of the post...cuz i could not find a way to remove the failed posted pics once posted...luckily i could reduce their size to almost zero(which gave me a perverse pleasure in itself and a feeling of victory in defeat).

maybe i'll make a second post with just those few pics that i wanted in this one and you'll just have to content yourself with a few chuckles at my apparent idiocy.

that is all. :-P