The Kitchen: AT Projects #2 - #4

There is always a running list of things in my head that I want to organize (or reorganize), but at the end of the day I never seem to get to them. Partly because they are low on the priority list and mostly because they are not fun to do.

However, with three days and a quiet house, it was the perfect time to tackle some of the areas in our home that had been bothering me.

Project #2 - The Laundry Cabinets

We live in a small townhome and the original design had the washer and dryer on the bottom floor of the house. After living in a rental townhome with a similar design TG and I both knew right away that we wanted to move the w&d in our new home up to the kitchen on the middle floor.

Storage space is also extremely tight in our house so TG's dad helped him install two cabinets in the free space above the washer and dryer. Slowly over the past year those cabinets became a receptacle for anything I needed to access quickly, but not daily, including laundry supplies, home improvement tools, and our filing.

I wish I had taken a before picture, but imagine loose nails, screws, paintbrushes, soaps, rags, filing, shredding and the like jammed in there with no sort of order.

Almost two hours full of sorting, trashing, shredding and filing later on AT Day 2, I had this.



And this.



Ahhh. Much better. Paint supplies together, all our tools and necessities neatly stored in the toolbox, filing updated and new folders labeled "to be filed" and "to shred" so there are no loose papers in there.

Eventually our board games will be moved into the living room on a built in bookcase I'm dreaming of, but for now the cabinet area is so much less cluttered.

Project #3 - Junk Drawers

I'm fairly certain every home has at least one of these and I try to keep mine orderly, but eventually they become overrun. It only took me about thirty minutes to get them both done. They are still kind of junky, and just now looking at the photo I've decided I need to get a couple storage bins from Dollar Tree for the lip gloss and antibacterial, but for the most part Mama likey.





The last kitchen project was a small redo, but it's one of the things that always makes me smile in that space.

Project #4 - The V

Eventually we want to get an over the range microwave, but for now I was left with a huge blank space in that area. I randomly bought a wooden monogram on sale at AC Moore a few months ago for $2 and when I got home I knew it would be perfect in the kitchen. Originally I covered it in a more whimsical floral pattern, but after a month of that I decided it needed a more sophisticated look.

I picked up a piece of pink paisley patterned scrapbook paper for $0.59 and acrylic craft paint for $0.99. I painted only the sides of the letter that would be visible. I traced the letter onto my paper and then hot glued it to the front.

Cute, right?


Here's a view of the area so you can see our little "V" in all her glory.


I just used some left over 3M strips I had to hang it on the wall and now our kitchen has a custom piece of art all for under $5.