Renovating for the Lazy

Before we bought Sarah, I was obsessed with home renovation shows. I pretty much watch them all. It probably started with Trading Spaces and evolved from there. I love pretty much everything on the DIY Network, HGTV, and even the classic This Old House which made Bob Vila a household name.

With the advancement of technology came websites to entertain me with renovation ideas: Pinterest, Etsy, Better Homes and Gardens, Houzz, and my new favorite Hometalk. If you've never visited Hometalk, it's similar to Pinterest and Houzz, where you can have idea boards with links to stuff you like. The difference is that it's almost all idea boards that include instructions on how to do things for home renovations. They link to blogs that show you what they do and explain how to achieve similar results.

I decided to tackle a project. I chose the window seat in our bedroom.

I did two things to our window seat area. My first project was to trim the curtains to the right height. I'm not a great seamstress but with help from my handy-dandy-sewing-machine I was able to bring the bottoms of the curtains up to the point where they just brushed the bottom of the bench.

 Here's a picture showing the great storage that the window seat has hidden under the trap door. We keep all of our bed linens and extra blankets there. The colors are all washed out because I'm shooting these in direct sunlight. Paint is actually white and the front of the bench is a very light grey.

The second part of my window seat renovation was to build a seat cushion to cover the trap door and the painted wood (which p.s. my kids had painted with permanent markers - the little sweeties). I found several tutorials online but I went with a no-sew bench cushion. Here is a tutorial if you want to know how I did my bench cushion.  

And if you're curious, here is what the bottom of the cushion looks like using the no-sew method. I really liked this method because the cushion fits perfectly into the space. It's a little snug so that my kids can't get under the bench and get out all of the blankets (and make a huge mess). And see - the wall in front of the bench is light grey, not black like the previous pictures looks like.

 Here is a view from the side, so you can hopefully see what it looks like in my room.

And finally, here's a close-up of the fabric and Kitty (yes, so original, we named our cat Kitty) I guess she wanted to get in on the action and hopped up on the bench while I was trying to take these pictures.

Mud Room Musings

We have a small entry hall in the back of the house that is just off the driveway. We currently have hooks hanging on the walls and I would like build a mud room bench and some shelves to go along with the current hooks.

We store all of our coats, jackets, hats, gloves, car keys, and shoes in this area so it needs to be functional as well as cute. I am looking for 3 main things: a bench with shoe storage beneath it, shelving or cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling, and beadboard backing with hanging hooks,

Below are some ideas that I have been collecting from the internet on what I want my mudroom to look like and how I want it to function.

1. This little beauty is probably the most simple to accomplish what we need with what we want. It has basic straight lines and we could do it with shelf brackets and just store the shoes in baskets under the bench.

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2. This is one of my favorite ones. I think that the colors of the knobs are stinking adorable. I like the way that the bench curves around the wall. This one is about the same size as what we could make. Plus we could extend the cabinet all the way to the ceiling and add a second row of hooks without it getting too crowded.

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3. This is another one that  is pretty cute. It's got the beadboard and the shelf goes all the way to the top, like  I want ours to do. I like separated partitions on the tip that match the separations on teh bottom.

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4. This one is cute. The height of the shelf would be easy to add a second row for hats, purses, and the like. I like that it has legit drawers instead of open bin space.

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5. This would be my ideal bottom bench if we can figure out how to build it. It looks like it might be a bit more complex to make than some of the things above. I really like the storage for the shoes and the small drawers for putting mittens and hats in. I plan on making a cushion to go with the bench and this demonstrates what that might look like.

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6. This next one shows what it might look like if we had a second row of hooks on the mud room wall. I also like the partitioned shelves on the top (and the fact that they go all the way to the ceiling). As of right now, the hubby thinks that looks too complicated to build, but I think we could do it. Youtube baby.

Let me know in the comments what you think, or if you find something that you think I might like but haven't thought of yet.