What Ana Does

Remember when I made those art ledges in the old dining room? Here's the post to jog your memory .  Of course I wanted them in my new dining room and I wanted them MUCH LONGER than the old house. 8 feet!  Now that I've made a few, they are super speedy to create. 30 minutes accumulative and $70ish at Home Depot -- I used cheaper Select Pine instead of the fancy Oak in the old house.  I LOVE the way it turned out -- though I need to spend a few days styling them out.  Just to take a trip down memory lane ... here's that wall when I started.  This suites are style much better.  I've got two more things planning for this dining room: a new chandelier and installing curtains (need the texture). But those are low on the budget, as I've got the basement and other projects to tackle.  It's never ending. In a good way. 

You gotta have an end goal.  If I've learned one thing in the last decade of home improvement-ing, it's that having/holding that final vision is key to not giving up, not getting frustrated and moving forward.  Will you stick to the exact end goal vision? No way. But you gotta start with some end goal in mind.  For the basement, it took me a few weeks to finalize in my head how I'd want to use each area. What would be most useful for my family. How will we use it? What do we need? What do we have that we need to accommodate.  There's a lot of weird angles, and small areas I needed to work around, too. And I have growing girls, so, "teen hangout" came up a lot.  Well, here's the layout!  At the bottom of the stairs, you've got the pool table to one side, and the kitchenette in the play space/hallway room where guests get beer. Originally, this was where the TV was, but the space was too tight to fit a sofa across from it. So, the room will be storage an...

Bruce and I take a walk around the block each morning after we drop Alice off at the bus stop. Bruce is a great walking buddy. He behaves well on the leash, doesn't bark and only stops occasionally to sniff at a clump of leaves or spot in the grass. Meanwhile, Pepper is NOT pleased with that arrangement. She's sweet, but LOUD on walks. And loses her mind if she sees another dog.   Not happy.  She's always watching.  :) 

 You know I love a good closet project!  Our laundry room has this little closet with two wire shelves. You also know how I feel about wire shelving. Ugh!  Here's my SHAME ... after months of living here, that closet looked like this ...  I know.... it's shocking, right?!  After reflecting on what we NEED this space for, I pulled together a very simple plan to add shelving. Yup... Storage by reusing those less-then-classy plastic crates again.  The good news is, I've done this before. ( Evidence here in my old pantry. )  YAY!  Step 1 is to pull off the door (which we don't need), clear out the mess and take down the shelf. I'm leaving that top shelf for several reasons, but mostly as a "just in case." Just in case I need extra coat storage this winter. Here's the cleared out closet:  Notice how the previous owners didn't install baseboards in this closet. WHY?!  So I'll fix that, too.  The next step is to install the cleats tha...