latest project

We need more storage.
More accurately, we shouldn't need more storage, but we have a ridiculous amount of junk that exceeds our current storage capacity.

Without going into details of how Storage Plan A was thwarted and abandoned, here's the progression of Storage Plan B.

PLAN B:

This wooden cabinet was the garage storage that came with our house. This is sort of a "before" picture, except it's already cleaned up, moved into Josephine's room, and I'd already started panelling the right wall with remnant slats from our 2" blinds, (that's the white corner/edge on the right hand side of the cabinet).

A little closer up:

Here is an "after" shot, trimmed out and painted white (we're fans of Mythic no-VOC paint-- it's worked really well for us and saves the concerns about little lungs being exposed to paint fumes since it's non-toxic.)

I probably could have spent less energy and simply reduced our junk by an equal amount, BUT we needed to move the books downstairs because they were causing Sean's office door to not shut. There was too much magazine/book weight in his office closet, so the floor beam (and door jamb) were sagging slightly. In order to relocate these stacks downstairs, we needed a bookcase. Hence, Plan B. (Still a little disappointed we didn't get to do Plan A, but I'm not going there). In the end, it seems to have helped the door jamb situation about 90%, but there's still some rearranging to do.

This pretty well epitomizes my attempts to get things done around here. ONE need (to fix the door jamb to Sean's office) required moving the books, which required a bookcase, which, in order to make use of materials I already had around here rather than buying MORE stuff, led to repurposing the garage storage cabinets, which led to building new garage shelves with scavenged lumber (since the stuff I took out had to go somewhere). But before I could put the repurposed bookcase in Josephine's room, I had to relocate the hope chest which sat in the needed space, and that had to go in our room where our shoes were temporarily located while I worked on the closet floor. So to move the shoes back into the closet, I had to finish the closet floor (lay carpet, a threshold, baseboards). ALL of that just to fix the sagging door jamb 90%. This partially explains why the living area is STILL painted its original, highly-distressing color of dusky salmon, 17 months after we "prioritized" repainting the main living area. But I digress.

Since the cabinets are in Josephine's room (even though it's holding our stuff), we thought we'd spruce it up a bit with some blik. Sean had a gift certificate to Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas which is where we found the fancy stickers. They are repositionable and don't leave residue, so it's just a temporary, baby's-room accent. Anyway, I might be well into my third decade, but it turns out you're never too old to have a really fun time with stickers.
Put some on the cabinet and others on the adjoining surfaces. The baskets on top now have ivy in them. We read somewhere that having several small plants in your house can purify the air of lots of strange weird toxins off-gassed from other objects in your house. I like this form of cancer-prevention much more than becoming vegetarian or something, so I bought planter baskets at the thrift store the day after I read that. Here's an overview that shows some more of the stickers:
Some closer-ups follow, since I have no way of predicting whether blogger will allow you to click on a photo and open it larger. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In the photo with the cow, hopefully you can see the window-blind panelling on the side of the cabinet. This was a handy solution to the problem of the cabinet sides having tons of holes and garage-induced imperfections which would have been hard to camouflage with putty and paint. Far easier to just cover them up (and simultaneously reduce the junk I've been storing)!
On the backside of her bedroom door:

On the wall by the cow:
The rubber bouncy cow is also from the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. It's rated 3+ years, so she has a while before she really grows into it, but under the wise tutelage of talented aunts, she just might get the hang of it early.
(We might need to clarify with her later that cowpokes don't actually ride cows...)