Ben + Power Tools = New Closet!

One of the charms of owning an older home is all the character and unique features that come with an older home. However, as much of a good thing as this can be, it can also be a bad thing and surprises hide beneath the floors and in the walls as we have learned owning this home. While our house is not particularly old for our town (built in 1950), it is old for us having only owned newish homes before moving here. We chose our house because (we thought) it had the least amount of work and projects to get it how we would want it. However, once we moved in and got a good look at everything the list of projects increased quite a bit. One of the first projects was gutting and renovating the upstairs bathroom (where we found rotting floors underneath two layers of floor coverings). Followed by the downstairs bathroom, then at the beginning of this year we had the living room, hallway, and guest room stripped of wallpaper, re-finished, and painted, and then this spring the carpet in the family room and on the steps replaced, built in cabinet redone, and the room repainted. It's been a little while since the last major project and Ben had been feeling the itch for a new project.

Amid all the holiday chaos and travel Ben took on a project while I was out of town last week. One of the most character filled areas of the home was the closet in the master bedroom. It's funny that with the three homes we have owned closet size has decreased with each home. I know this is as much a part of the location and the typical features in a home in a given area as well as the age. We started out in Georgia with a huge walk in closet, then in Illinois had a decent walk in, and in Mass we have a smallish non-walk in closet. It had obviously been redone at some point in the house's history, but whoever did the project must have quit part way through since it was mostly unfinished... It had unfinished 2x4's for trim, uneven hanging bars and shelves, and weird accordion doors (also unfinished wood) that would not close and were in the way. I wish we had taken a better before picture, this is part way through the demolition process. Ben also discovered some heinous wallpaper underneath some of the walls too. Some of that wood on the side is the wood that had been trim around the closet before.

After that, Ben fixed the walls inside the closet, added nice door framing trim all around the frame, repainted, and installed a new closet system. We're still trying to figure out what, if anything, we should do about the discolored stripe on the floor. I think this is from a prior closet system from years ago and over time the wood faded in different ways. For now I think we'll leave it as is, but I wonder if there is a way to fix this that does not require refinishing the entire floor or if the only solution is to cover it up. The closet now looks incredible, for the same amount of space we can fit so much more in here now and there are doors over the shoe organizer area. I love it! Ben does great work!