Out on a Ledge

We're snowed in at home for the second time in a week, so consider these extra projects and posts a result of Mother Nature's recent wrath on the midwest.

We have talked for years about needing to add some interest around the seating area in our living room. While we have some great architectural elements in the windows and stairwell, we've always felt a little additional color and personality would do a lot.

 
So we've focused on this half wall to the right. It's a challenging spot because of the open cutout to the stairwell on the top third of the wall, where we traditionally think to add decor. We love that detail of the room though, and wanted to add some interest below that compliments it.

C has tons of leftover oak from trim taken out of our various remodel jobs, and we love putting that 90-year-old oak back into the house. So he went through his scraps and built a narrow ledge for the wall.

We filled it up some some of our favorite small hardcover books, as well as a few photos and small pieces of artwork - we even included the post card we recently made into a poster! It instantly added a lot of color and interest to our little corner. 

We look forward to rotating the contents on the shelves for different seasons and occasions, as well as how it will provide us an excuse to keep collecting small cards and pieces of artwork. I imagine it full of holiday cards in December, and changing out photos as we take trips and as our nieces grow up.

This gives a nice new focal point in our living room - I think the only real wall space left to think about is the two spots beneath the sconces. I'd love to have something there, but the challenge is finding objects the right size (the spaces are fairly narrow) and something interesting, but neutral so it won't compete with the items on our ledge and our brightly colored pillows.

These small changes in our living room are a lot of fun though - and we're not finished yet! Watch for a few more over the next week or two!

Post Card Art

 For several years now, C has collected old post cards from flea markets and antique stores. Many of them are historic Kansas City tourism cards, created of historic buildings, parks and boulevards in the early 1900's.

One of his favorites has always been the Power & Light building. It's one of downtown's most beautiful buildings, in our opinion, and the post card is beautiful and full of color. Plus, on the right end of it you can see the edge of the President Hotel, which is where we stayed after our wedding - see the red PRE toward the bottom right corner?

And this particular card, like many of our favorites we have collected, was actually mailed. I love the child's handwriting to his or her mother, and the fact that the sender had so much to say that it's written over every corner of the card. And notice there's no address - apparently there was only one Mrs. John W. Smith who lived in Bethany Missouri when this was sent!

 
So C decided to try something out. He scanned the post card at high resolution, and then doctored it up in Photoshop and had it printed at Costco. We weren't sure how it would turn out, but the print only cost $8, so we decided to give it a try and see what we ended up with. The result was a beautiful 20"x30" poster - one with great color and fun sentimental meaning to us. I did a quick Hobby Lobby trip for the frame ($50) and custom mat ($16), and voila! We had a great piece of art for our walls, for a total of $74 - not bad at all!

We hung the poster in our stairwell, where there is a great focal point and a wall that needed some dressing up. It brightens up the dark corner very well, and gives us this great little piece of beautiful Kansas City history to admire every day.  

A New Walk-In Cedar Closet

A walk-in closet is a rare gem in an old house. After our bathroom remodel in 2011, we were left with an extra 10 square feet of unused space. Luckily, this extra space was adjacent to our 3rd bedroom closet.

This closet was gross, awkward and old. So, I decided to knock down the back wall to see what was behind it.

After we cleared out the demo work, I insulated, drywalled, and then covered the walls with tongue and groove aromatic cedar.

Having an air nailer made the project fun and fairly painless - without that tool, I would not recommend installing tongue and groove paneling.

 

Here is the halfway point - paneling up - looking from outside the closet.

The next steps were refinishing the old oak floors and adding the finish cedar trim work around the baseboards and windows. We even added crown moulding, which is probably not necessary, but I'd never done it and wanted to try.

The final step - adding custom shelving to help me get organized. Priorities were hanging clothes on two rods, and shoe storage.

 The doorway to the closet is super narrow, so it was hard to get a full shot of the new space. B made a nice white curtain to give some overdue privacy (the neighbors are thankful).

 We like the look of galvanized piping and flanges, so we indulged a bit and got the heavy, metal hardware.

 

View from window looking towards door/shoe storage. We gave about 7" of clearance for each row of shoe shelf.

I was very excited to get all my junk back into a closet. Size 13 shoes don't really fit well anywhere, so this solution gives us some much needed storage. Also, it kinda feels like you're shopping when you pick out your shoes for the day, which is fun.

Cedar is a fun wood for a closet. It smells great, is super soft, and easy to handle. I'd say with a budget of $200-500, you can pimp out a boring closet with great success.

For more closet pics, the full gallery can be found here.

Thanks for reading!

C