Paint Party! Finally!

Until now, the only place that we had painted in our house was a closet. That closet does happen to also be our baby's room, but still. It is a closet.

Ooooohhhh how times have changed!

We now have 6 walls painted. Some of those walls may be pretty small but they are still walls! We have had the paint sitting around for these rooms since we moved into this house. I'm not really sure how I convinced Scott to do this considering we still have almost no down time but I did and now it is done!

Before we added a fancy dancy art display (I will share it on NeverListless in a few weeks) I had hung Cora's paintings with both tape and sticky tack. The sticky tack came straight from my 1985 collection that I have diligently held onto. It seems to have lost most of its stick but I'm not giving up on it. The sticky tack left a dark green residue. If you are familiar with sticky tack you know exactly what I am talking about. And the tape left a majorly gooey film. I pulled off the sticky tack as well as I could but there were still grease spots. I tried a number of methods to get the tape goo and the grease off. The best one turned out to be rubbing my fingers quickly over it to roll it loose. Neither adhesive was removed 100% but somehow the paint covered them both up perfectly.

Here are a few before photos to jog your memory:

It was paint city around this hizzie for a few nights after the kids went to bed:

The color is called Gray Horse by Benjamin Moore. I had it mixed at Lowes using their No VOC paint.

We did one side of the hallway and the walls connected to it one night and the magnet board wall the next. Scott was the roller master and I was Ms. Cut-In. We even caught up on a few TV shows while we painted. We acted like it was 1940 and listened to them like radio programs. It was kind of fun! And, I'm glad that we painted in small sections because I decided that this is, in fact, not the right color for the entire level. It is a bit too dark for a lot of the space and a bit too green to go behind my teal shelving unit. I plan on using Winter Orchard by Benjamin Moore for the rest of the space but that may change.

Here it is with everything back up:

This is the only after photo I took of Cora's art display wall before we put up the new art display.  

Last (and, definitely least) here is the terrible after shot that I took of the kitchen wall that was painted. 

I can't wait to share the rest of the progress that we have made in the house!

We Are Going Bi-Weekly.

Sorry folks... it is happening. Neverlistless is only going to have one new post every two weeks.
HOW IN THE WORLD did I put up a new post five days a week when I first started. That is some shenanigans. I honestly don't understand how it was possible. Now I don't even have time to shave my legs. You would not believe how long it has been. 
You are probably wondering why I don't go shave my legs now instead of spending the time to continue talking about them on my blog. Actually, I'm wondering that too. 

I have so much cool stuff to update you on but I just cannot make the time to do it. I have the photos, I have the lists, and I have plenty of bizarre stories to tell but just give me a little time. 

Here is a little peak at the massive yard overhaul Scott did and the new little buddy that we added to make it exciting. ps Cora is obsessed with the new yard art, "Roosty."

I hope to see you back next week for a legit post!

THe Hall Closet. Ehhhhhh Would We Call This An Interesting Topic?

Who loves the line in Love Actually where Hugh Grant is talking to someone about a new lady who has started working for him. The person he is talking to refers to the new girl as chubby and Hugh Grant says, "ehhhhhhhhhh would we call her chubby?" That line cracks my sister and I up.

Back to the blog... I have the most minor update in the world but you are still getting it. Sorry! I don't have much time to do home-related updates these days so when I do them you are going to hear about it.

Our coat closet is a disaster. Always! Cora calls it my cubby hole since she has one under the stairs and Scott has his cubby hole office. I guess she didn't want me to feel left out. So I feel personally accountable for it.

We have made some not so exciting changes to it!

You are really going to wonder why I think this is all worthy of being a blog post. I tried to justify it earlier but I changed my mind. It really isn't worthy. So I will include a *LIST* (yay lists!) for you. After this amazing list I will have really lame photos of my hall closet. 

Tricks to add more storage in your hall closet:
1. Fill it up with your junk and then take a look at it. If you are really tight on space in the rest of your house like we are you will find a ton of ways to store all of your random stuff. If you aren't tight on space then you should probably find a slightly more normal place to keep your extra junk so your hall closet doesn't look like it belongs to a crazy person. Either way this tip is all about purging your junk and assessing your space.
2. I mean it... just look in your closet. Is the back of the door empty? Not for long? Throw some coat racks, shoe racks, bins, etc up on there. Make sure to use "hollow door anchors" if your doors are indeed hollow. 
3. Hooks! Go hook wild in there! A hook for a bag full of bags? Yes! A hook for your child's lunch bag shaped like a bee? Yes! (Side story... try your best to send your child to school with a lunch bag. Otherwise you will feel bad when you send your kid to the first day of school with a tupperware container with their name taped onto it. You will feel especially bad when the weekly class newsletter mentions that all of the kids loved showing off their lunchboxes... oops! At least by the time Cora got to pick out a lunch bag they were all half off at Taget!).
4. You may think that that area at the very top of your closet is unusable. You would be wrong. If you are a youngin' you obviously use that area to hide in when playing hide and seek. If you are a cat, you find a way up there and nap. And if you are me (as an adult) you smack a shelf up in that gotta-have-a-ladder-unless-you-are-a-giant-like-me space and store the ridiculous amount of used tissue paper that you have accumulated up there. The first two vertical closet space ideas came from how it was used in the linen closet of the house I grew up in. Poor kitty was constantly getting closed into that closet.
5. When our house was being built we paid a little extra to have an electrical outlet put in our hall closet. It is a great place for the dustbuster. It would also be a good place to keep a charging station.

And finally here comes... Our Hall Closet Updates (I cannot stress enough how fantastically exciting this will be):
Soon after we moved in I added a shelf to it so the super high up space wouldn't be useless. And I didn't even write a post about it. How about that!?!

I added a plastic bin for hats, keys, random things.

I added a coat rack to the door. I liked it so much that I added another one:

The lower one is nice because, not only does it give us a bit more hanging storage but Cora can reach it. So when we want her to grab her bag or a jacket. Tada... she can!

If you need some more terribly unexciting before and after closet photos be sure to check out this post of hall closet reorganization happenings at my old house.

If you want even more organizational inspiration check out my not-at-all-up-to-date archives. 75% of the way down I have a ton of links to organizing stuff and every single one is more interesting than this post.

Next week, I am going to show you the fancy paint part that has attacked our house. And the week after that I will be showing off the awesome (no sarcasm here) art display that we made. I love it and you will too!