Today I’m sharing two quick and easy projects in the dining room that slowly but surely are helping us move from “construction zone” to “place you might consider eating a meal.” We still have a loooooong way to go, but these were some little things I knew I could cross off the list relatively quickly.

First, reclaiming the space as part mudroom. The back door into this space is our main entrance, so we need it to be a functional entry with storage for coats, shoes, bags, etc. We lost our big closet when we tore down the wall, which is okay because we have a few closets in our basement. However, we just hadn’t taken the time to get organized post-renovation, and our coat stand had been chilling in the corner of our living room still replete with all our winter jackets.

As I mentioned on Monday, we had some friends over on Saturday night for a summer party that we’d put on the calendar months ago for motivation to keep going on our renovation. We didn’t make it as far as I’d hoped, but it was still great motivation because the day of the party I spent hours just cleaning and organizing in a way I hadn’t done in months. One thing I did was finally get our new basement coat closet up and running, complete with mounting hooks on the inside of the door for my bags:

As for the dining room, I love the coat stand that we have, which we got at Target:

But I knew it wasn’t right for the long haul — I wanted wall-mounted coat hooks on one wall in the corner near the door, and a full-length mirror on the other wall since we have no mirror right now and that might explain why my standards for what I leave the house wearing have declined precipitously. Not that I really care, but it’s at least nice to check that I don’t have anything in my teeth or a massive wad of cat hair on my pants before heading out into the world.

So wall-mounted coat hooks I made! It took me awhile because I couldn’t figure out what style of hooks I wanted. I spent way more time on Pinterest than one should spend looking at coat hooks. The vibe of the space is not rustic or shabby chic, so a lot of the reclaimed-wood-mounted hook projects out there just didn’t do it for me. But I do like the look of light raw wood, so I figured I could use some scrap wood that fit the bill from our basement as long as I could find hooks I liked. I agonized over that for awhile too (like, weeks), before I realized that we’re just going to cover the thing with coats anyway so the hooks will become invisible pretty much right away.

With that revelation, I grabbed 12 of these simple hooks from Lowes for $1.48 each (the online price seems to be $1.70 each). I wanted to make two sets of hooks, so I cut two pieces of scrap wood to 32″ long to fit across the wall in question. Then I started spacing out the hooks I’d bought evenly across the length of each piece of wood.

I attached all the hooks, and then pre-drilled some holes for mounting the racks. I wanted to countersink the mounting screws so they would sit flush with the rack, so I just used a large drill bit to drill a shallow hole for the screw head before drilling a through-hole with a smaller bit (that’s a trick for countersinking if you don’t have a special bit for it — just be sure to drill the larger hole first, as it doesn’t work well if you reverse the order).

Then I carried my two racks upstairs, and with the help of my level mounted the first one.

A trick for doing this by yourself is to set all the screws in advance — that is, drill them into the wood so they’re just about to come out the other side, that way once you have the rack on the wall it’s very fast and easy to drive the screws in the rest of the way with one hand while you hold the rack up with the other.

And here’s the finished result:

I’m not sure how exciting coat hooks can really get, but I’m pleased with how they turned out. I’m also now intensely conscious of how monochromatic our outerwear palette is…. I do want a more colorful mat there at some point and something that will extend out in front of the door, since once winter comes that will turn into a muddy snowy disaster zone.

I’m also happy that the whole thing creates a really slim profile, which leaves plenty of room on the opposite wall for a mirror as planned:

On the other side of the door I’m planning to buy/build a floating storage piece that will create a landing zone for keys etc as well as serve as storage for more shoes. In the meantime, we’re using my little black shelf that I salvaged from the school Naomi and I pillaged last year.

Last week I actually sold the shoe cabinet that we’d had in the sunroom.

I love it (it’s from IKEA, and so useful), but it was time to admit that there was absolutely nowhere for us to put it because it’s taller than the window frames on three of our walls and taller than the cutout into the kitchen on the fourth wall. I got $80 for it, which definitely helps offset some of our unexpected spending. (I actually listed it for $75, but the person who picked it up didn’t have change and neither did I. Craigslist pro tip: always bring exact change when you’re buying on craigslist, you aren’t buying from a store and can’t expect that the seller is going to have change for you.)

Anyway, if you are super detail-oriented you might have noticed another small update in my coat hook photos, way off to the side.

See it? The floor grate, obviously! Full disclosure: I did not actually get the coat hooks done before the party. But I did replace the floor grates because the ones we had were just way too terrible:

So much ew. In addition to being filthy, they were totally smashed in from countless times when we stepped on them and the flimsy little metal pieces bent. This was actually super dangerous because it was so easy to put your put through and potentially fall into the vent and break one’s ankle (one time I was standing on a chair and a chair leg went through the vent!), and I could never figure out why they would make a floor grate that’s so dangerous.

When I went to pick up new grates, I found my answer: the grates on our floors are actually ceiling/wall vents. Yes, whoever installed them previously used ceiling vents instead of floor vents. Probably the same person who threw that plastic stool into the blank corner cabinet before putting the counters on:

Ceiling/floor grates are unlikely to be stepped on, so don’t have to withstand the weight of a human being. Floor grates do. Complex, I know.

Anyway, I grabbed three of these nice new grates from Lowes for $15 each:

There are slightly cheaper ones available, but I liked the lines on these and since I only needed three of them I figured I might as well “splurge” (the floor vents are for our AC, and the rest of the grates in the house are sturdy ones that aren’t super attractive but blend in perfectly well with our hardwood floors and aren’t massive safety hazards). I knew I needed the 4×10 option because that’s the size of the opening for all our vents — I’m just glad a standard size fits, unlike for poor Naomi!

So now we have some lovely new grates, which shine all the more when compared to their filthy and treacherous predecessors:

The third one is in the kitchen, and I didn’t take a photo. But I think you get what they look like.

So that’s it for today, a few small projects that give us just a few more things to smile about when we look around the space. This weekend I’m off to the Hudson Valley to go camping with friends, I hope you have a lovely weekend!