One Man's Trash.

Living in 500 square feet is one of the greatest of our adventures. Everyday we have to come up with new ways to store our infinite junk - not least of which includes our massive book collection. Our bedroom closet has been a madhouse since Christmas, when we were generously given a large quantity of food storage. We love the food, but the storage part has somewhat eluded us. Well, we made a little trip out to the D.I. about a month ago and Landon found this lovely morsel:







The pictures don't really do its uglyness justice - it's not even wood, it's like a recycled particle board substitute masquerading as wood. And the color doesn't go with our house at all. But it was a storage space, and it fit in the one nook/cranny of our living room that hadn't been conquered yet. So, for the mere price of $15, we had our first D.I.Y. project (if you can't tell, this excited Landon immensely).

We started out by sanding it down to make the laminate "rougher" and then applying some really thick primer. This worked out pretty well since the weather was good and we could work outside (as you may have guessed, there is no garage involved in our 500 square ft. kingdom).

We painted some of the pieces green, since our living room is green but we thought black paint would cover up the particle board better than a lighter color (we were right). A couple weeks later, we decided to work on the painting portion - unfortunately, the weather was no longer cooperative. So we got inventive and laid out a large tarp in the living room. Hilarious, and probably not the best idea. But we had a lot of fun watching LOST and painting together.

This Saturday, we finally finished! We sanded down the edges so that the green would show through just a little bit, Landon put the whole thing together and we stocked it full of blankets to be used in our living room - where people sleep when they come to visit. :) In this manner, we cleaned out an entire shelf on the top of our closet where we are now storing our legos, snow clothes, and a large box of rocks from Landon's wanderings - that made room for the food storage on the floor of the closet without blocking the entrance! You can walk all the way inside the closet now without tripping! Happy, happy day!
Here's the finished product:

It makes that corner of our living room look so much more finished, it gives us quite a bit more space, and we love it! Not bad for a $15 investment, eh?