Organization | Off Boulevard

DIY Spice Jars

January 30, 2013 By Meredith Leave a Comment

So…some of you may have noticed the not so glamorous way we currently organize our spice jars when I wrote about the new shelves we installed in our kitchen -

Yup, they currently reside in an old clementine box. I kinda like it, but thought I’d take a shot at spicing things up a bit – pun intended. After doing a little online shopping, I came across this guy from World Market -

Yup, sold. I loved that there was two different sizes, 3 oz. and 7 oz., there’s just certain spices you need more of (I’m talkin’ to you cumin and oregano). For the labels, I decided to try my hand at stenciling (no, this doesn’t count as the stenciling project for my 13 in 13 list). I couldn’t find anything after visiting a couple craft stores, so I ordered Martha Stewart adhesive stencils from Amazon.com. After cleaning the jars and sticking on the letters, I gave them a good coating of glass etching cream -

I let the cream sit for about 10 minutes and then washed it off. Done! Super, super easy.

Here’s a round up of supplies for the project -

Jars – large $3.99, small $1.99
Martha Stewart Adhesive Stencil – $8.89
Glass Etching Cream – $8.99
Paint Brush – already had

I’m not willing to part with my beloved clementine box yet, maybe I can re-purpose it for something else. I’m calling it right now, clementine boxes will be the new pallet in the DIY world!

Filed Under: DIY, Organization

Shelves to the Rescue

January 26, 2013 By Meredith 1 Comment

Storage is like gold in an older house. And our kitchen was severely lacking in that area. For the first year we lived in our house, all of our pots and pans were stored in our hallway closet. Then we picked up this guy from IKEA -

We didn’t have to leave the kitchen to boil water anymore, but our counter tops were still covered and we had random kitchen stuff stored all over our house. So back to IKEA we went and picked up some shelves to go over the console. They sat under the console for months, patiently waiting to be installed while I debated whether or not I wanted to paint the kitchen. I finally gave in and chose storage over color. We used self-drilling drywall anchors to make sure the shelves could support a decent amount of weight -

And up went the shelves -

Here’s a before and after shot from the dining room -

For now we’ve loaded the shelves with randoms from around the kitchen, but over the next couple weeks I hope to add a few new friends to help organize the space even more.

Filed Under: House, Organization

Stick a Fork in It

November 9, 2012 By Meredith Leave a Comment

Paint job? Check. Peg board? Check. Shelf Liners? Check. Rolling crates? Check.

The hall closet is donezo!

After spending more time on this closet than any other room in our house so far (it’s sad, I know), our final task was to load her back up. Before the makeover, the closet was a catch all for everything in our house.

Thanks to some storage we’ve added other places around the house, we’ve been able to make the closet more of a hub for linens and cleaning supplies. We installed a pegboard on the inside of the door to hang some cleaning tools (which we should probably use once and a while…).

We also built rolling crates where we now store painting supplies and other random supplies for all our projects. Olivia is still young enough that she can’t open doors, but for her safety we’ll probably have to find a new home for these items when she gets a little older.

Speaking of things Olivia gets into, we also moved the contents from some drawers in our master bedroom into the hall closet. It was Olivia’s favorite game to take all our band-aids and sample sized shampoo/conditioner/lotion/body wash bottles that we ~~steal~~ take as gifts from hotels out of the drawers and leave them all over the house. It was getting a little old picking them up all day so we put all the sample bottles in a basket -

And I bought two boxes to store medicine (ick) and first aid supplies (ouch) -

So far the wrapping paper turned shelf liner is holding up pretty well -

We’ve come a long way closet -

Please forgive us if we don’t pay you any attention for a long, long time.

Filed Under: House, Organization

Go Carts

November 2, 2012 By Meredith Leave a Comment

This week we took another step forward with the project that never ends, our linen closet. So far we’ve painted the inside of the closet, used wrapping paper as a shelf liner, and installed pegboard on the inside of the door. The final project, besides actually putting stuff back in the closet, was to build rolling carts to go under the bottom shelf. Before the makeover, we were using old cardboard boxes and shopping bags to store painting supplies and other random stuff.

It was a pit. To upgrade, and actually increase the amount of storage, we decided to build rolling carts inspired by vintage crates. The space we had to fill was pretty big (and we have a lot of crap), so the carts ended up being ginormous. The base is 21″ x 16.5″, the ends are 16″ x 16″ and the side pieces are 5″ x 21″. For the base and ends we used 1/2″ plywood and the sides are 1/4″ plywood.

We stained the boards using Minwax Early American -

To put them together, we used wire nails and wood glue, first securing the base and the ends -

Then the bottom and the top side panels -

And we put the middle panel on last so we could make sure the distance between the boards was somewhat equal, then finished up on the other side and we were done with a box!

The last thing we had to do was screw on the wheels and we were done.

The carts are ha-uge but they fit perfect!

Filed Under: DIY, Organization

Gone to the Birds

September 28, 2012 By Meredith Leave a Comment

This week I’m shutting the chapter on a project that has taken me entirely too long to finish. A project in a prominent room in our house? No. A project that will make our lives easier? No. A fun project for Juice? No. Instead I embellished one of the smallest, least visible “rooms” in our house – the linen closet. Wooh hooo! I had already painted the inside of the closet a light gray and installed some peg board on the inside of the door to add extra storage, now it was time to show the shelves a little love. I started with some sanding and a coat of white paint. While I appreciated the “character” the last owner gave the shelves -

I decided white, unlabeled shelves were more our style. But white wasn’t enough, the shelves needed more. Enter wrapping paper and Mod Podge. Oh yes, I was about to enter the glorious, yet mysterious world of Mod Podge. I had actually never heard of the stuff until I joined Pinterest. I kept seeing pins about how to make Mod Podge and all I thought was that it looked like milk. But after a little investigation, I’ve learned that apparently it’s the Holy Grail of crafting. And it was just the thing I needed to help create shelf liners. For the liner itself, I turned to one of my favorite stores in Richmond, Mongrel. It’s an amazing store full of randomness, with a section of fancy sheets of wrapping paper. When I saw this guy, it was all over -

It’s not exactly cheap so I bought one sheet to experiment with. When it passed the test, I searched online and found rolls from Paper Source (it’s called Birds Wrapping Paper. I know, very original).

Once my rolls arrived, I went to work cutting out sheets to fit the boards. Then I put a thin layer of Mod Podge on the shelf and laid the sheet on top, trying to work out any bubbles. I let it dry overnight and then put another thin layer of Mod Podge on top.

After another overnight drying session, the shelves found their way back home.

And yes, I covered the top two shelves you can’t even see. My OCD kicked in and just wouldn’t let me get away with not doing it. Now Brian and I are working on a little somthin’ somthin’ for the space under the bottom shelf.

Then we’re going to have explain to Olivia that her new favorite place to play is no longer available.

Filed Under: DIY, House, Organization

Indecision Killed the Closet

September 15, 2012 By Meredith Leave a Comment

The last couple weeks, I’ve spent a stupid amount of time working on our hall closet makeover. For such a small room, it’s sucking up a lot of time! But I don’t blame the room, I blame my utter lack of skill at picking paint colors and my flair for indecision. To arrive at my latest paint nightmare, I was working on what was suppose to be a quick project based off this pic I found when looking for inspiration for our hall closet makeover -

I loved the peg board idea as a way to create extra storage space. Our closet door has two indentations in the middle so it was a perfect place to inset the pegboard. So my first indecisive moment came when trying to decide what to do with the pegboard – paint it white or paint it a shade that would pop against the gray we already painted the inside of the closet. In the end, I decided to spray paint the pegboard white and paint the inside of the closet door. The best of both worlds. We have a ridiculous number of paint samples around the house so I picked one of 8,000 mint colors that I tried for the patio ceiling -

Strike one. It was neon mint and didn’t look very good with the yellow color in the hallway. And I conveniently forgot to take a picture so sadly I don’t have a picture to share with you! For the next round I picked a darker mint sample. Strike two. Again, no picture to document the ugliness. Then I decided that I’d start from scratch and buy a new sample of a green shade. Tried a test swipe, strike three. At this point I had no desire to purchase any more samples so I turned to two of the colors I sampled for the back door we painted, Antiguan Sky and Robins Egg. The test swatches looked pretty good and they probably both would have worked, but after spending way too much time on the door already, I threw in the towel and decided to just paint the door the same gray I used for the inside of the closet. Done.

So after that was settled, it was time to attach the pegboard. We cut the boards to the exact dimensions of the indentations and to attach them to the door, Brian cut little blocks to fill the space between the pegboard and the door.

We glued them to the back of the pegboard, can’t you just feel Riley’s excitement?

And finally, we drilled the pegboard through the wood blocks and into the door.

It wasn’t exactly the pop of color I was planning on, but hopefully the function will make up for that. I’ll have to figure out another way to add a little punch to the closet, which I think I may have found in this little pattern -

Filed Under: DIY, House, Organization, Paint

Nerd Binder

September 4, 2012 By Meredith Leave a Comment

I love magazines. I could sit at the book store for hours with a cup of coffee and a stack of magazines. My impulse buy in line at the grocery store is the magazine rack, it get’s me every time. Fitness, home, travel…it doesn’t matter, they’re all so good!

I know, I know, I could save myself the money and read the magazine on-line, but it’s just not the same. The only problem is that once in a while, the number of magazines laying around our house reaches critical mass. This was the situation a few days ago -

When it comes time to purge, it’s not as simple as taking a stack to the recycling bin. There had to be a way to store all of those ideas, but not all the magazines. Enter my Nerd Binder! A few years ago I started ripping out articles that inspired me, had something I could reference in the future, recipes, and any other random bit of info or pictures I liked.

To store the ideas, I bought a binder and some sheet protectors to put the articles in.

Some of the ideas we’ve already tried, like the clothesline we made in our backyard -

Other articles I save for inspiration, like this laundry room -

Several I reference frequently, like this article about how to identify problems with a plant -

And I have a whole section dedicated to those fitness routine cards you can rip out of Shape and Self magazines -

As the binder fills up, I’m sure I’ll eventually start sorting the articles into categories like I did with the fitness section, but right now it’s just a hodge podge of articles. I’ve already moved all of the recipes I saved to their own binder. Whether I ripped out the entire page or just a picture and added a hand written recipe, a picture is a must!

So there you have it, my magazine obsession turned nerd hobby. My own homemade version of Pinterest! And the good news is that the magazines don’t go to waste. Even after I’ve removed some articles, the magazines are off to their new home at a local hospital where you can donate them.

Filed Under: DIY, Organization

Organize This

August 11, 2012 By Meredith Leave a Comment

I’m taking a little break from DIYing this week, we’re hosting some out of towners (my sister, her husband and their 4 year old twin boys). Instead I thought I’d share some inspiration for our hall closet makeover. Progress may be on hold this week, but I’m still plotting our new organizational wonderland.

These two closets are great for cleaning supplies -