DIY Nursery Closet Details

 Happy Monday everyone! Today is my official 4th of July holiday and it is always so nice to have a three day weekend. I personally think that having three day weekends every weekend would make for a much happier lifestyle, can we make this a reality? Today I wanted to share our DIY nursery closet which was finally completed this weekend. We have been working on this closet for quite some time and it finally ready to go! 

Overall, creating the structure of it was not difficult and did not cost much at all. I ended up picking a design based off of The Greenspring Home blog and although we are not great DIYers, I think the closet turned out great and wasn't necessarily super difficult if you are a beginner DIYer. 

Supplies Needed

Closetmaid Vertical Organizer 

2 Closetmaid White Laminate Mounted Shelves 

Closetmaid White Metal Shelf Bracket Support Kit (optional- we didn't end up using ours because we aren't going to be storing anything super heavy on these shelves)

Wood Closet Rod

Wood Closet Rod Pole Sockets (2 Piece)

Step by Step

First of all, disassemble any previous closet structure. We had a wire shelf with a single hanging rack installed in this closet- think builder grade materials. I actually really despise wire shelving, I think it looks super cheap and was not a fan of the single hanging rack because baby clothes are so tiny. There is so much wasted space underneath them when hanging. One afternoon I got my screwdriver out and used my muscles to pull the wire shelving out of the closet. It was anchored in and involved some serious tugging, but I only needed Tim to help me with one anchor that I just could not get out of the closet.

Once your old closet system is out of the closet you will probably need to patch holes and paint. I patched all the holes myself, sanded everything down and then painted. I didn't do a super thorough job painting since we would be installing a new system and you wouldn't be able to really see the paint job behind it anyways.

Here is the closet, patched and ready for the new system to be installed.

After you've completed this, you want to build the vertical closet organizer. What I did was build the bottom three bottom squares and then built two more separately knowing that a shelf would separate them. This left one square unused because it wouldn't fit nicely in the closet with the two shelves I wanted. 

Now before actually installing anything we did some measurements. I wanted the vertical organizer to be centered in the doorframe which meant that it was not centered in the closet. We measured both sides to figure out how long we needed the wooden dowel to be cut since we wanted four hanging sections. We also had to cut the shelves since they were a little too long for our particular closet.

Here is the closet laid out without the wooden racks installed yet. 

I also purchased some storage cube bins from Amazon. I picked the pastel pink but there are a variety of colors depending on your preference. I really wanted to lean into the light pink for our little girls closet. I filled these and then pulled them back out so Tim could install the wooden clothing racks. 

Tim took the lead on installing the dowels and then wood glued them into place. Then the following morning it was time to fill the closet!

I measured all the areas available and then headed to HomeGoods to pick up some bins for the top and bottom of the closet. I also grabbed some more hangers so I could get all of her non-pajama outfits on hangers.

All the baskets were purchased from HomeGoods so I unfortunately don't have links for them. 

I also got the adorable elephant piggy bank at HomeGoods. I thought it would be a sweet subtle decoration that will also come in handy to collect change.

I haven't finalized the organization of the closet yet, but I will share what I've done so far. The top left basket holds muslin swaddle blankets. The middle pink bin holds bottles and pacifiers that will need to be sanitized. The top right basket holds our infantino baby carrier.

The top left hanging section is for newborn and 0-3 month clothing. The top right hanging section is 3-6 month clothing.

The top two pink bins hold clothing and shoes that have been handed down to us but are in much larger sizes. We won't be using 2T items for quite some time but I haven't established a system for clothes to grow into so for now they will live in these bins.

The bottom left hanging section is 6-9 month clothing and the bottom right is 9-12 month clothing. I realize that it is a little silly to hang all of this in the closet, but I know our sweet Ellie will be growing out of clothes so fast I think it will be easiest to keep everything hung during the first year and rotate sections out as she grows. Once she is a size for more than just a few months I will section the closet off by clothing type instead of size and keep sizes that she will grow into elsewhere. 

The three pink bins hold burp cloths and bibs, wipes and size 1 diapers. These diapers are the backups to the changing station I have set up with newborn and size 1 diapers. Since we are unsure if she will wear newborn diapers from birth, I set up a section of them for her but also set up size 1 diapers in case she goes right into those. I also have several drawers in the nursery filled with extra diapers that are still in packaging, but these are diapers that were taken out of their packaging for a quick refill.

The bottom of the closet bins hold feeding supplies on the left (boon drying rack, breast milk storage bags, nipple pads, etc) and extra hangers on the right.

As I mentioned, I haven't exactly figured out my organization systems in here yet but this is a good start and I can certainly adjust as we go forward and see what we need.

Here are two quick sneak peeks of the rest of the nursery....

There is still a lot to do, but I feel so much better about the status of the nursery! My mom is throwing us a baby shower in a couple of weeks and they are throwing me one at work the following week so I know we will have more items to organize in here, so I'm trying to not go too crazy. 

Now, one last look at the gorgeous closet...

Ahh so pretty! Have a great day everyone!!

One Year

Guys. It's been ONE year that we've been in our house!!! Can you believe it?! 

One year ago yesterday we started moving in but we actually reached the one year mark of owning our home on September 12th. Let's recap some of the changes that have happened in the last year of home ownership, shall we?

I shared the news that we had officially bought our house and I shared when we moved. 

Our first project (before even moving in) was painting all of the kitchen cabinets.

We brought Sophie home.

We went to Ikea and did a few small projects with Ikea organizers. and purchased some Ikea furniture. We bought some new kitchen appliances from Home Depot.

We decorated for Christmas, bought some new decor, and figured out how to deal with having no pantry.

I made extensive to-do lists for our house interior and the exterior.

I straightened up our office.

We updated our wall decor and bought some cool wall art for our kitchen. 

We installed new blinds- finally some privacy!

I organized some kitchen drawers (check back on Wednesday to see inside all our kitchen drawers and cupboards!)

Some small house updates were made, did some yard work, learned all about gardening, and Tim built a walkway all by himself!

Once that was completed I created some new front gardens. I managed to keep everything alive that I planted! I have been loving having gardens this summer and can't wait to add on next year!

Can you believe we completed all that stuff in our first year here? Tim is currently working on a project right now and I will drop a little teaser picture right here....

Any guesses what we are up to?

Cheers to another year of projects in our first home!

DIY House Projects: Completed Front Walkway

Today I'm sharing our completed front walkway! I can't stop gushing about my husband. I am in awe with the amazing job he did!! I never knew he was so talented at home projects but this walkway is just incredible. 

Remember where we started?

It was just an empty lawn and when we stepped off the front steps it was muddy and gross.

Then we had the moat...

Now, we have this......

Isn't it beautiful?!

I love the pattern and cannot believe what a great job he did!

He did such an amazing job and I'm so proud to have an amazing and talented husband.

My plan is to create gardens to surround this walkway with gardens and I can't wait to get this next part of the project done!

Also, do you see that little fluff ball in the window? :)

What do you think of the walkway? Have you ever built something like this before?

Flowers In The Woods and Planning Our Front Walkway

Good morning! How's it going? 

I hope you are all doing well and are able to get some projects done during this quarantine. I am still doing okay over here, but as the weeks go on I am missing my friends and family. It's getting harder to stay at home 24/7 but I know it's the right thing to do and we are definitely taking advantage of the gorgeous weather and are getting out for walks whenever possible and have also taken a couple of rides. 

Today I wanted to share a few things with you guys. I know we have talked about the yard a ton lately but it's because I'm so excited to actually have a yard after being in an apartment for so long! I am excited for all our plans and can't wait to complete all of our projects, I know I am driving my husband nuts with my impatience and I am trying really hard to work on that!

First off, we have daffodils blooming in the woods next to our house. I am wondering if once they are done blooming if I should dig them up and move them to our garden. What do you think? Would you leave them here as a little surprise pop of color or move them?

Also that falling down fence in the background, we are 99% sure that it belongs to us but are going to confirm with the neighbor and then take it down. We are planning to put up a fence that will be a little closer in to keep Sophie in the backyard. This fence in the picture is falling down everywhere and is such an eyesore, I can't wait to remove it!

We have some really nice forsythia bushes along the woods as well which is great because they are very full and bring some color to the landscape.

You can see in the above picture how the flowers are on the edge of the woods which makes me wonder if they were planted here originally to be a part of the woods or if there was a garden here. I'm not sure what are plan is here other than leaving it wooded for the most part.

We also have periwinkles directly behind our house and all through the woods. I think these are technically considered a weed but I have always loved them! We had them surrounding a big rock in our backyard when I was growing up and loved that area.

In our front garden, I initially thought this was a crocus when it popped up but it's white daffodils! I definitely need to get some other early bloomers in this garden because these look so lonely!

Now about our big project that we started planning out yesterday...

Sophie was zero help so she was sent inside. She was not a fan of this and barked at us the entire time.

We used rope to plan out our walkway!! Right now when it rains we basically have a big pile of mud at the bottom of our front steps. We are planning a gray brick walkway and Tim had the idea to rope it off so we could figure out the measurements and exactly how many bricks we would need for this project. 

Our plan is to extend the front garden on the left to wrap around with the walkway. This is going to be a huge project with a lot of planting but I'm so excited to pick out plants and make it look beautiful! We will also bring the right hand garden out slightly to meet the walkway and I think it will look great.

When we were planning this out I noticed a bit of pavement in our lawn...who knows why that is there! We plan on also getting grass installed to make our lawn a little less brown, so hopefully that will happen soon.

Here's a better view looking out at where the path will end in the driveway. I'm SO excited for this project! I'm not sure exactly when we will complete it but I will keep you updated.

We did order our pavers to complete this project because they are on sale at Lowes until 4/8! We are having them shipped to our house and are thrilled that we are saving 60% on the supplies for this project.

Share with me the projects that you are working on! Have you ever installed a walkway before?