My Weekend Project: Before and After

Most years, our Thanksgiving weekends are spent partaking of home improvement or redecorating projects. This time seven years ago, we painted the master bedroom. That project took the entire weekend--mostly waiting for paint to dry...and making several trips to Home Depot to buy more masking tape. Now, since the house is mostly painted and--save for the kitchen--decorated the way I like, projects like this are getting fewer and further between.

I had been wanting new bedroom furniture. I even told Q that's what I wanted for Christmas. There's nothing wrong with the stuff we've got. There's just not enough of it to hold all our clothes. So instead of doing the unthinkable and paring down my wardrobe, I started looking for a new chest of drawers.

Then Wednesday night, it hit me. We have this nice alder wood TV cabinet in the den that was being under utilized. . Aside from being far too big for the 10 x 8 foot space, it was being used as a storehouse for boatload of junk: a broken TV...phone books that we never use (who needs the Yellow Pages when there's Google?)...along with an electric pencil sharpener, cell phone chargers, check blanks, and miscellaneous office supplies that can all be housed elsewhere.

Since the den is Q's work space, I asked him if he had any attachment to keeping the armoire in there. He said no and when I mentioned moving the piece up to our bedroom and using it for additional clothing storage, he was thrilled. He was about to save some money. And I was so excited about this project that I bugged Q to help me with it first thing Friday morning.

It took several false starts, but we got that bad boy moved up our narrow staircase. It was after the first try that we realized that removing the doors would really lighten the load. I also removed all the pictures from the wall before we tried again.

After we got the armoire right were we wanted it, it was time to figure out how to convert it from a TV cabinet to clothing storage. We thought about installing shelves on top of which we would set plastic bins or wicker baskets. There would be some carpentry work involved there so I set out seeking alternatives.

On the Target website, found these great stackable storage drawers. They're see-through so I can see what's in the drawer before opening it. I arranged my shirts according to color, but we'll see how long it stays like this. I also bought and installed the hookrail on the inside of the door to hold my belts and scarves.

The bottom part of the armoire remains empty, but I have that space earmarked for Q's jeans and sweatpants.