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Isn’t this Lovely?
Have you ever Re-purposed a Closet?
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Well, if I had thought of taking a picture before I got started, you would think this was lovely. At least, you would see the huge improvement. If you have been reading this blog, you know that I live in the house I grew up in. The house is 42 years-old and has had four generations of my family living in it.
This particular walk-in closet is located within a gigantic room over the three-car garage. It has it’s own staircase, and it is where until recently Christopher was living. Needless to say, it had become a huge catch-all, store-all, and if-you-don’t-want-to-deal-with-it-now stick-it-in-there room. DRIVES ME CRAZY!
When Christopher left, he left a lot of his junk behind, but Rory and I have big plans for this enormous room including this closet. When my family first moved into this house, the room over the garage was our playroom, and the closet was my dad’s office. Over the years with differing family moving in and out of the house, it became a bedroom and walk-in closet. My dad’s office moved to another wing of the house into another bedroom.
My dad just turned 85-years old last week, and I’m not sure he will ever be back to California. Even if he does return, I doubt he would be spending much time in his office. Rory and I want to reclaim that office bedroom and move my dad’s office back to its original location. So now, the project has begun.
If I had taken the picture at the start of the project, you would have seen tons of clothes hanging and folded on the shelves, and boxes and bags staked and piled all over the floor. So much stuff went to Goodwill. Other stuff just needed to be thrown away. Of course there are other things that just need to find appropriate storage. This large room also has a coat closet and two tunnel closets that run the entire length of the room, one on each side. These need cleaning out too, but we have to do this major project one step at a time.
Here are some pictures of our progress…
This closet would easily fit a Queen-sized bed with night stands and dresser.
It is actually larger (square-foot wise) than a couple of Luke’s bedrooms at his house. It just doesn’t have any windows, but it does have air conditioning!
Don’t you love the original carpeting?!
And look at those Cable TV Wires… Nice, right?
This is the first major step in the reorganizing and revitalizing of the house after all of the construction from the flood at Christmastime. We have to get this closet re-purposed so we can get my dad’s office stuff out of my room and my son’s room. Kirk would like to have his room back so he can come home from college to stay a weekend or the holidays with us again.
So now you’ve seen it. Don’t you feel better. Your house isn’t so bad after all. Wish me luck in my endeavors as I tackle this mountainous project.
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Does your house hold any dirty little secrets?
What projects are you working on?
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On Another Note~
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Around the World with I Am Meg
Today marks the 10th post in the Travel Guest Blogger Series. Please go check it out!
Today’s Post: Shannon: Cancun, Mexico
For a list of all posts, Check the Schedule: HERE
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~Lorelai
Life With Lorelai 
I really love seeing before-and-after transformations so I will enjoy this. I think it is a very neat space and you will do something great with it. This is really exciting 🙂 And that is some cool retro carpet! Will you keep it?
As much as I would love to change the flooring, it is not in the budget right now. So yes, that lovely retro carpet will be staying. Who knows, maybe by the time I can afford to change it out, it will hold the world’s record for old carpet still in use! 🙂
You are so brave Lorelai, taking on some big projects! I am sure you will do well as always, looking forward to see the finished room. Dirty little secrets in our house? Yes, but no one knows, that’s why they are called secrets 😉
Ha! Love it, Anna. 😉 I am both excited and dreading this project.
That is a BIG closet! I actually tackled the twin closets in one of our spare rooms earlier this week…but they were small. You have your work cut out for you! I know you can do it!
Yes…it really is more like a windowless ROOM rather than a closet! And we have to negotiate two sets of stairs with heavy heavy large furniture…not gonna be fun, but it will be great when it’s finished. 🙂
That is an awesome closet!! I can’t imagine the possibilities are endless!!! I can’t wait to see what you do with the space!
I am excited about getting the office back into that space. But what I am really looking forward to is reclaiming the bedroom that has been the office for so long, and doing some fun stuff with the rest of that room over the garage! 🙂
That’s a huge closet! I kind of repurposed our under the stairs closet a few times. It was a play closet (it just held the toys) and then craft storage, now it’s our homeschool closet with all our school stuff. I wanted to put my desk in there, but it’s an inch too wrong in dimensions. I would have to dismantle it and then put it back together inside the closet to get it to work. Sounds like too much trouble to me. Good luck, you could probably do something fun with that carpet to make it look like you did it on purpose.
My entry hall closet is under my stairs, but when we were cleaning up some stuff after the flood, we realized that there was a whole lot of unused space under the stair landing. Luke and I are talking about taking out the shelves in entry hall closet and knocking out the back wall to open the space up for use. The only thing that needs to be in there is the venting for the heater. That’s no problem and we will have a ton more space to use. Yippee! 🙂
Rory wants to put the piano under the landing and play Phantom of the Opera music in there… LOL
Well!!!! Wouldn’t you!!!!!! It would be the perfect way to freak out our guests during Halloween!!!! 🙂
Muwahahaha!
That is a huge closet! I need something like that to store all my junk 🙂 I can’t wait to see the final results. 🙂
It is a huge space! But it is smaller than the bedroom where the office has been residing. I’m looking forward to the final results too. 🙂
Is there anyone else who thinks the girl curled up under the shelf is hilarious? Is that your daughter, Lorelai?
It would be wonderful to have that much room. The first house we bought was like that–2600 sq ft with room to spare, room to reclaim and room to grow.
You do have to love retro carpet…just can’t find that shade of turquoise anymore 🙂
That is Rory! You just WON a months free advertising for your blog on Life With Lorelai!!! She thought it would be hilarious to take a picture under there. 😀
Yes, that lovely bi-colored blue and green carpet…it’s not really turquoise. It was everywhere in our house, and I do mean everywhere except the bathrooms and kitchen. LOL
OMG that’s so awesome! Thank you so much!! I kept reading the comments surprised that no one else was mentioning it. lol And Rory was right…It is hilarious!
I’ll grab your new Blog Button…is that all right? 🙂
I thought it was quite funny too!!!! I just decided to do it and told my mom to take the picture!!!! The only hard part about getting underneath there was my 3 inch heel ankle boots that were still on my feet!!!! 😛
BWAHahahaha! It was funny to watch you get in and out too! 😀
What a nice closet and how impressing the difference after the cleaning up. You motivate me to cleanup my own. Thank you for sharing.
It is a pretty nice space. It feels great to see a real start to this project. 🙂
What a brave lady for sharing before photos with us! This closet has so many possibilities. I can’t wait to see the end result. 🙂
I’m excited for the END …result too! 🙂
I love re-doing areas. We re-did a laundry room and bathroom. We made an extra kitchen, and bathroom and moved the laundry room to our storage room this summer. So much to do but it was well worth it!
Awesome! Did you blog about it at all or post any pictures? I would love to read about and see this project. 🙂
We are in the process of re doing my son’s room. We started a year ago and haven’t finished. Ugh
It takes forever! It would be much easier to move to a new place and start fresh. This rehashing everyone’s lives and trying to get past memories to de-clutter can be difficult.
Nice progress! I’ve seen NEW homes with bedrooms the same size or smaller than that closet!!
I know you’ll love it when you’re done. Looking forward to the reveal (you probably are too).
My dirty little secret, is the room above the garage. It’s just a huge storage room and it’s not very organized!! I hate it.
See! That’s where this closet is…and there are more closets in that space too. I have my work cut out for me, but it will be SO worth it! 🙂