A staining we will go......

In reality our closets are basically finished but since I am way behind on blogging this was the project that consumed most of the extra time we had over the Christmas/New Years time.




Below is the old closet once we tore all the drywall down, we had contemplated just making 2 openings for the room I am standing in and having a standard closet, and closing off where you see the purple door. But as I posted previously the contractor that did the framing and my husband decided to have a happy surprise for me and make my side a walk-in closet.










Here is Adam's side of the closet after it was reframed with nice new wood that was plumb and square (made drywalling much easier). We made his opening wider so that we could put in double bifold doors, I think that makes a shallow closet much more usable.

And below is my side of the closet, which as you can see is about 20 inches deeper than Adam's, he seriously probably has less than half the clothes that I do, so I think the set-up is appropriate.

Once Adam got everything drywalled, which by the way was made a ton easier by borrowing an electronic drywall sander from his co-worker, we needed to decide how we were going to fix all the missing floorboards due to the reframing. We finally settled on using most of the spare pieces from Adam's closet to put down in my closet, so that my whole closet would have the original floor like the rest of the room.

For Adam's side we tried to go and find something close that was pre-finished but that was to no-avail unless we wanted to spend $3-4 sq. ft, which we really didn't for a closet. We ended up getting unfinished hardwoods in white oak from Lumber liquidators for like $1.50 sq ft and then found a stain that matched really well. For the next couple of days I went through the process of staining the floor, and as you can see below it came out pretty darn well. We used a product by Mini-wax called Polyshades, it has the poly and the stain mixed together so you basically eliminate having to poly it after you stain. We used the stain color of Classic Oak and I put it on with a 6 inch stain brush. I did 3 coats and between them I used 000 (fine) steel wool for a sand/buff process to the poly. In the photo the two floors meet right at the doorway but I don't think you can tell much of a difference!

And here is my closet floor (below), Adam pieced back together all the flooring scraps we had to make this look right and I think he did a great job. We polished it up after this picture was taken so it looks a bit cleaner now.

One final staining project that I did, was that I needed a shelf above my top hanging rack in my closet, so since we couldn't' find anything that matched my organizers (of course) we decided to by some precut pine and stain it. This one I did the old fashion way and went through three coats of staining and then let it dry then 2 coats of polyurethane to seal and protect it. For both projects being my first staining experiences I think the results came out well. Of course all I did was follow the instructions.

Next up.....is completed closets and a finished master bedroom. Of course to finish the master we still need to paint, put up crown molding, moldings for doors, windows, & floor, change out the light fixture, hang curtains, and then move all of our stuff from the other room. Hopefully that is all done by the end of the month, but of course I never predict when we are going to have things done anymore.