Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

Sorry to everyone who wondered where our regular post was yesterday! This post was scheduled, but somehow errored and didn’t send, and I didn’t realize until the evening. I even took a picture to prove it. So weird!

Anyway, here is your usual insightful, helpful, and relevant content!

Since finishing the dining room and setting up the basement workshop, I’ve been without a project. In my 2017 goals I planned to do a half-makeover of my bathroom next but I am just not feeling it.

Half-makeovers served me well when we first moved into the house and everything was ugly. It was really satisfying and necessary to go for some quick fixes, like in the kitchen, to create a decent environment to live in while we took on projects. But now that things are looking better, I’m ready for more permanent solutions. I don’t want to waste my limited time on projects that will only last a year or two.

So I am leaving the bathroom alone until we do a real renovation on it. But what to work on next? The next big project is a true renovation in the kitchen, but I am just not ready to cause that sort of long-term mayhem in my home.

Instead, I am taking on a smaller and more limited project: the front closet.

Closet Problems

This is the closet that is right at the front of our main hallway, central to the kitchen, living room, and dining room.

We use it to store shoes, coats, hats/gloves… and board games. It isn’t working very well.

There are several problems with it:

It’s all the way across the room from the front door. This problem isn’t going to be fixed, and is why we have some storage by the entryway for the stuff that we use all the time – a few shoes, jackets, and my purse and work bag. It is simply true that we won’t actually go all the way to the closet every time to put things away.

It’s “deep” on the sides. There is a good amount of space in the closet, but the storage extends past the door frame on either side (and particularly on the right side). This makes for the worst kind of storage: hard to access, hard to see, easy to forget about what you have crammed in there.

It’s not organized, and there isn’t a way to organize it. There aren’t a lot of different spots to put things. We added a hanging shelf and a few baskets, but overall we’ve just got a lot of stuff piled in there. With so little structure, even if we did use these storage spots for what we intended them, it would still overall be messy.

It’s filled with stuff. We have never cleaned this out… just moved all our stuff in there and kept adding more. We use probably 5% of the stuff in here on a regular basis, and another 10% seasonally. Not good stats for one of the most accessible and central storage spots in our house!

Closet Solutions

I can’t fix everything about this closet. I obviously can’t knock it down and move it across the room… not without destroying the beautiful dining room that I just finished. However, I can fix most of the rest.

Here is my tentative plan:

The main goal here is to build out more divided storage. The shelf along the top is working about as well as it can be, but we need another place to store board games since it’s really inconvenient to keep them up there. For the rest, we need a lot more storage options.

I plan to add a shelf along the bottom so we can have two levels of shoe storage… hopefully leading to rows of shoes rather than piles. On the deepest side, I plan to build out the space with a series of cubbies, including a few drawers or wire baskets, for things like hats, gloves, and fancy shoes that should be kept separate. Finally, for these cubbies to be accessible, we can’t have the hanging coats pressing up against them, so I plan to replace the full coat rack for one that ends partway across and is supported by a bracket.

However, before starting any of this, we have to deal with the ridiculous amount of stuff we had crammed in here…

Progress Step #1 – Clean Out

… so we did a quick clean out. It was pretty painless, we just took everything out, and IDed things to keep, things to give away, a few more decrepit things to throw away, and a few things to move to storage in the basement.

While I found it painless, Brad isn’t a fan of getting rid of stuff…

We then moved everything back in (since I’m not actually starting building this right away and don’t want to have coats and shoes all over the place in the meantime).

I think the after photo makes the case even stronger than the before photos that this closet really needs some work, since this is about as pretty and organized as it can get. Now I’m really excited to do the project!

But before I do, any suggestions that I haven’t thought of for closet storage? What do you think of the plan? What works for you?

We always like bringing you guys in on our favorite “DIY games,” whether that is trying to figure out whether stuff we see on craigslist is great or terrible, predicting how much weird stuff should cost at a flea market like Brimfield, or just griping about everything that’s wrong with our houses. However, we were out looking at stuff at a consignment store the other day and realized that we haven’t yet involved you in one of our most common and most simple games: discussing whether the stuff we see at a consignment store is a good deal or not.

Consignment stores are tricky, stuffed as they are with painted serving platters and blocky wood tables made in the 1990s. If you’re used to flea markets and thrift stores, its easy to be seduced by the plethora of reasonably clean, reasonably sturdy, and reasonably priced items. But we’re not after reasonable: we’re after awesome pieces and great deals.

We thought it would be fun if you helped us spot them! We’ve collected a variety of pieces at different price points – give us your opinion on which are the best deals at the price:

If you had $25 to spend at a consignment store…

If you had $25 to spend at this particular consignment store, you could buy a lot. Consignment stores are built on the $25 price point! One of the first deals we noticed was this cool wooden piece, billed as a planter but probably good for holding blankets or magazines in a living room.

You could also get a really nice chair – sturdy, clean, and with a modern style that would fit in with a lot of different tastes. This would be good at a desk or as an extra chair in the living room.

You could also get these adorable elephant book ends. Brass animals never go out of style!

Finally, and we feel bad even including it since it is obviously a STEAL and will throw off the voting, you could get this demonic Nixon statue. Just in time for Halloween!

So what would you buy?

If you had $80 to spend at a consignment store…

$80 doesn’t sound like the most obvious price point for us to pick, but there were some amazing deals! For example, you could get this little side-table/chest, with beautiful wood, nice metal details, and tons of storage.

There was also this simple but good quality side table, with that MCM style that is so popular.

Finally, you could get this intricate wall lamp, which could probably be sold by anthropologie for like $1500.

So what would you buy with $80?

If you had $150 to spend at a consignment store…

Getting into more serious prices, you can start getting some serious stuff, like this media cabinet/bookshelf. It has simple lines and a vaguely MCM vibe, and the dark glass would be great for keeping unsightly things like a small TV out of sight when not in use.

You could also get these high quality office cabinets, with room for supplies and files. They’d be great for kids/teens, but also look great in a modern grown-up office.

Speaking of stuff that would be great for both adults or kids, this vanity has real mother-of-pearl inlay in a sweet pattern. How adorable for a little kid’s room, and $150 isn’t that much for such a substantial piece!

Finally, you could have a lamp made out of cardboard. OK, that doesn’t sound awesome, but it clearly is.

So what would you buy?

If you had $250 to spend at a consignment store…

$250 will go a really, really long way at a store like this, even getting you this attractive and clean looking sofa. It would look great in a living room, but is also causal enough to work for a porch or a sunroom. And does its style remind you of anything that the tiny bloggers may have made lately?

(We checked, and the cushions weren’t made out of wood… I guess we’re still waiting for that trend to catch on #looksovercomfort.)

You could also get this intricately carved and freshly reupholstered chair. We’re not sure we would have picked that exact fabric, but its awesome in a more-is-more kind of way.

This glass bookshelf was also available, with beautiful old wood and great storage. The cloth would easily come off, and the glass could either be kept clear or frosted. It has a similar feel to those barrister bookcases, but at a price a reasonable person can actually afford!

So what would you buy?

If you had $300 to spend at a consignment store…

Finally, with $300 to spend, you’re the elite 1% of consignment store shoppers and the best stuff is available to you. You could get a sleek, mod, teal chair, which would have looked awesome in Sage’s living room if she had that kind of money to spend that day.

You could also get a display table with beautiful wood grain that folds out into a desk with hidden storage. How cool is that?

Which would you buy?

So what did we think was the best deal? Did we actually buy anything?

There were a lot of tempting pieces (like that woven lamp and glass covered bookself), but if you know us at all, you’d easily be able to predict that the elephant bookends came right home with us.

What do you think? Did you agree with the consensus, or feel way off? Were you picking on personal style or what you thought was the best objective deal?