First House Project

We love our new house.  It has lots of extra space that we are using and some that we are looking forward to setting up still!  Our new house is only 5 years old, so it really doesn't need much in the way of upgrades, other than a few little things here and there.  For instance in the first 2 weeks we were here I pulled down 2 towel racks and a toilet paper holder just in normal use... I guess the previous owners must have either been gentler in their daily use of the house or they were really good at reattching these fixtures.  Anyway, Doug kinda missed the idea of doing lots of house projects (as our old house had a long list of project to be done from the time I moved in with an unfinished list when we moved out), so this last weekend Doug decided to find a project to do.  Hoping to find a solution for Christmas decoration storage other than taking up his precious garage space, Doug cut a hole in the back of Amina's toy closet (just off of the 'great room/family room') to see if there was some 'wasted space' under the stairs. Luckily he was right and there was a lot of extra space under the stairs that was being used for nothing!  He proceeded to cut out the whole back wall of this closet out, reframe it, and reclaim that wasted space to store things we only use once a year.  There are a few pictures below.  The part I'm most excited about is what Doug's putting at the back of the closet to cover the storage space.  He got a piece of wood and painted it with chalkboard paint and once it's completely dried it will be screwed over the opening so that Amina has a chalkboard at the back of her play closet.  It will be such a fun addition to that already adorable space!  I'm so thankful to have such a handyman husband!

This is a picture of the closet before we moved in:

Here's what it looked like when the wall was torn out:

And now the space is cleaned up with the reinforcement installed:

Amina enjoying the new space:

And now it's full of Christmas storage (you can't see the huge bag including a 7ft tree and other greenery):

I'll have to post and after picture once the 'chalkboard' is in too!