The Cloffice Reveal

Well after a few weeks of painting, tracing, painting some more, shopping, organizing tons of papers, putting together a chair and a file cabinet, installing shelving, hooking up electronics and labeling everything, I think the Cloffice is ready for it's big reveal! I'm not totally jiving on the placement of some things yet so I might play around with it some more but I really need to move on and get other projects finished up as well. We also did not add electrical outlets or a permanent light fixture to the cloffice because hopefully next summer we will be tearing this down along with the bathroom behind it to open up the  playroom and kitchen eating area to each other and make one big room back here.  We will add a cloffice, powder room and main floor laundry in  the hallway and other closet area that see in a picture below.
Remember this is what it looked like just a few short weeks ago, this is just so embarrassing:

And in the playroom was where we had our "office." I dare you to find a Target receipt or bill in that mess and pay no attention the window that needs to be trimmed out, it's on the list!

Even the bubs was embarassed!

Here it is, almost all cleaned out.....Mr.A really needs to find a home for his guitar!

This is what the dining room table looked like while waiting for all the papers and office junk to be organized:

I painted, traced and painted some more.   You can read more about the wall stencil post here.

We finally got around to the end product, new flooring, painted and stenciled walls, new shelves and here it is, the big reveal! 

Ok, open those doors and let's see it:

Here is the before and after, once more:

And here was my inspiration picture from Country Living, not bad huh?  I would love to have a cute drop down chandelier and some globes but I was too cheap to buy a globe!  I'm hoping to find one at Goodwill.

I tried to think of all we purchased to make this happen so here it goes:
The cute little file cabinet was from IKEA $40
The white storage boxes were also from IKEA and were $7 for 2= $14
The chair was from IKEA and was about $20
The garbage basket was from IKEA $3
The silver office stuff and file folders are all from Target for $45
The shelving and 1x2 boards underneath were about $30
The tow hydrangea pictures I printed out for free at http://www.graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ and the frames for the pictures were from Target's dollar section  for a total of $2.
I repainted the bulletin board with silver craft paint for $1.35
The white basket we have as an inbox for receipts was $4.83 on clearance at Target
The lamp was on clearance at Shopko for only $8 (the original price was $79.99)
The cute little white flower pot/jug with  the flowers I had already was from IKEA  for $7
The little clear clock was from IKEA for $1
I also had to buy some more paint for the walls, I ran out, so $18 for paint as well

Grand Total:   $194.18 

The price of having a place to put all our receipts, papers, bills, printer, etc. and being organized.....   PRICELESS!!!!

Thank you to Traci at Beneath My Heart for the closet organizing challenge, Jen at I Heart Organizing for the Paper Challenge help,  The Graphics Fairy Queen for the pictures in my cloffice and living room. Also to Emily at  Jones Design Company for providing the stencil and tutorial on the painted wallpaper!  Finally, the biggest thank you, to my partner in crime design, Mr.A, who lets me cook up these crazy projects and does his best to go with the flow and helps make my projects a reality!!!!  He laid all the stick tiles and installed the shelving, put together the chair, the file cabinet, the eletronic equipment, organized all the papers and survived a four hour shopping experience in IKEA with four children!!

You can also check out my recent Pantry Makeover, Mudroom Makeover and Kitchen Remodel.  Check back soon as I get ready to reveal the playroom makeover! 

I'm linking up at the following places:

This remodel is being featured at:

Cloffice Wall

Well if you recall, a few weeks ago the hall closet looked like this:

We decided to make it into a "cloffice" and now it's turned into a giant playroom, cloffice, flooring project, which happens with every project, it grows bigger and bigger!
A few weeks ago I came across Emily's post over at Jones design company and fell in love with her "painted walllpaper." I instantly knew what the back of my cloffice would look like. Head over here for the tutorial! Here is my wall, just waiting for the shelves to be installed, hopefully tonight! It took me forever to trace the stencil on the wall, I think I used an entire pink pearl eraser before I had it just right. The easy part was painting it! Stay tuned for the finished project!

2011 House Goals or Wishful Thinking?

The Nester just posted on her blog 2011 Home Goals for her home. It's so nice to see other bloggers who have beautiful homes still have those spaces that aren't perfect and have places that they would like to work on.
Mr.A and I sat down last night to decide what project we were going to tackle next so we could figure out the budget and all the boring stuff that I don't like figuring out.   If it was up to me, we'd just dive right in and figure all that out later. Good thing Mr.A is around to keep me somewhat grounded.
So I am going to post our goals for our home this year as well and hopefully by December 2011 I can look back and see some of these accomplished!

Install the dining room corner cabinets
Paint the cabinets
Paint over the brown on the bottom and possibly a new color on the top as well
Reupholster the dining room chairs.
I'm still not sure if I'm going to keep the table cherry or repaint it, possibly white.
Another thought is adding some board and batten to the wall but that might be too much with the cabinets, we'll have to see as we go!

Next on the list is the hall closet/playroom.

With four children we have a lot of games, puzzles, coloring books, craft type stuff.  This closet is usually a little more organized but with Christmas presents combined with Christmas break and a toddler that loves to get into stuff, the closet is looking less than stellar.  I'm embarrassed to put this picture out there but I'm just keeping it real.

We hope to turn this closet into an office, like this one from Country Living:




Which leads to the playroom and all it's glory.  We have two closets, one is pictured below, looking a mite bit scary.  Again, just keeping it real, it's 11pm and I don't have the energy to make it look pretty right now. 

Install shelving units in the two closets for toys, games and playroom crap stuff
Move the bookcase/shelving units out of the playroom
Replace the carpeting with some type of flooring that is not carpeting  as the dog thinks it's fun to pee on carpet
Paint the doors white or replace them with white doors
Install window trim and paint the trim around both windows, a project left over from this summer when we replaced the windows in the playroom
Repaint the playroom and get rid of the curbside couch, make it have more of a hang out/kid friendly feel to it

Rip out the desk between the two closets and make a cute little bench seat

 

On a side note, I think I clean this desk off about once a week but really it's just a catchall and the kids' computer area which doesn't get a lot of love during the week.  Don't judge me, k? 
Moving on from that scary mess......

When we bought this house, it came with a lovely white and green diamond patterned tile entryway floor.  It was as slick as ice and if you made the mistake of stepping on it with wet shoes, you were in for a wild ride!
One day while using my floormate I hit the tile and a little green diamond popped up off the floor.  I was able to pick up almost all the tiles by hand without any effort.  A few actually were grouted to the hardwood floor but about 80% came up with ease.  The floor has remained like this for about a year and a half now.

I would love to refinish this but that might have to wait until we refinish the living room and dining room floor as well.  So, not sure what we'll do right here but I'd like something done so it doesn't look so unfinished.

This is it for now, I have a ton of landscaping that I would like to accomplish this summer as well but it's kind of hard to show pictures of what I'd like to redo because everything is covered in snow!

There are more things I could put on here, like both bathrooms needing makeovers,  main floor laundry, figuring out what we are doing with our bedroom sitation (3 girls in one bedroom is just the beginning), knocking out the wall between the kitchen and the playroom which then would mean no office closet, refinishing the hardwood floors on the main floor, I could keep going but I'll just stop there!

I love my home but sometimes I feel like I"m always trying to improve it without stopping and just letting things be for a while.  I don't have a Country Living worthy house nor will I probably ever.  What I want most is a home that is safe, comfortable, inviting, warm, welcoming and inspiring.  A place for my family to think back on fondly when they are grown.   A place where they bring their teenage friends to hang out, their children to visit in and where they will always call HOME!  Unless of course I get the bug to move in a few years.  ;)

Thanks for checking it out and I'd love to hear from you!

I'm linking up at The Nesting Place.