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{Bloggers without Borders}: Doing DIY Projects in My Sleep

Today begins the last week of what has been pretty much the most amazing summer of my entire adult life. Andy is off for the summer, and it’s my first summer not working since early high school.

So yeah. It hasn’t sucked.

We’ve done a lot of lazing outside in our beautifully designed and expertly landscaped backyard pool. We went to Michigan and vacationed in Florida.
Uh oh, I feel an involuntary spewing of vacation photos coming on…

Excuse me.

…and maybe the best part of this whole summer is that I have taken daily naps. It’s outrageous. Feel free to be angry at me, then feel overwhelming compassion for me when I get whiny and miserable starting next week.

It was during one of these glorious naps that “we” finally made some progress in our ugly ol’ laundry room:

…which I’m redoing this summer as part of a “Blogging Without Borders” series I’ve joined with a bunch of other bloggers who are actually doing real things, unlike me. I just like to talk about unicorns.

While I was delightfully unconscious one hot summer afternoon, Andy ran out to hit some yard sales, and came back with a set of cabinets to install on the back wall, above the washer and dryer.
White secondhand cabinets
Someone was selling all their kitchen cabinets, and these happened to be exactly the length of the wall, for only $20. (To get these from Home Depot or Lowes would probably be about ten times that, and we’re hoping to redo this whole room for just $100.)

There are actually two pieces here. (Forgive the weird garage lighting here please.)
White laminate cabinet boxes
The one on the left is a corner piece, which is why the left portion of it doesn’t have a door on the front.

Anyway, I woke up from my nap excited to see that we had cabinets! And they’re actually SUPER tall, which is really nice. But we had some brainstorming to do. I didn’t like that they aren’t symmetrical and I didn’t like the weird left side. Ideally I wanted an arrangement like this, with open shelving in the middle:

From DIY Village

So we brainstormed for a few days. And decided the best option was just to use the double door cabinet, centered on the wall, with open shelving on each side.

One small problem. That cabinet with double doors has that weird left thing because it’s a corner cabinet.

So I did the only, productive thing I could think of.

I took another nap.


(True story.) When I woke up from my nap, Andy had cannibalized the second cabinet, taking the board that made up its side wall, and somehow rebuilt the first cabinet without that side box thing. I forgot to take a photo of that. Because I was asleep.

And then.. he went ahead and took down the shelf in the laundry room…
laundry room construction in progress

You’re welcome for all these beauty shots.

…And he installed the cabinet on the wall.
Weston helped by measuring random objects.

The next step is to install floating shelves on either side of the cabinet, and put the doors back on. Andy probably would’ve already finished that, but I can’t decide what color I want to paint the walls, so he’s waiting on me.

And truthfully? I’m hoping the answer will just come to me… in my sleep.

How’s your summer been? What’s your nap-to-job-completion ratio?

P.S. You might be wondering, “Kelly and Andy, you have hung cabinets before. What does this post have to do with Blogging Without Borders?” LOTS. Or maybe nothing. But probably lots. Don’t worry about it.

UPDATE: See part 1, part 2, part 4 and part 5!



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Comments

  1. Erin @ His & Hers says:

    I clearly need to take naps more often.

    Seriously, how great was it having BOTH of you home over the summer? I sometimes wish Rick was a teacher so he could enjoy summers off, too. But then I remember the time he taught piano lessons and realize that patience and people who don’t do what you tell them are not his forte. Ah well.

  2. wow, if i take a nap i just wake up to more work and a mess…. lucky you!

  3. First- very jealous of the nap thing, good for you. can’t wait for the big reveal of the laundry room- mine has been a dumping ground lately.

    • Ha! Our nursery has turned into the dumping ground for all laundry-related stuff. No nursery pics coming up any time soon. 🙂

  4. Your projects are great, but it’s your humor that keeps me coming back. In between naps, of course!

  5. Awesome! I’m hoping to do something similar in our laundry room sometime soon. And I’m totally jealous of your summer off…

  6. So what you’re really saying is that I need a combo of white sandy beaches and naps to be productive? Genius. I’m on it. 😉

    • YES. That’s trick. As long as you measure productivity by how many magazines you’ve read, or how well-slept you feel. 🙂

  7. That’s amazing for $20! What a deal and I’m sure you’re going to love the extra storage.

  8. High five for progress! And naps! And adorable baby bums!!

  9. Now that’s what I call a good team effort!! Oh and you’re a big tease ’cause I was pretty psyched to see the end result.

  10. So jealous of your summer off! I miss having summers off!

  11. Keep on taking those naps…I know I still do…

  12. I’m feeling the need to nap for the rest of the day … can Andy come over? 🙂

  13. wait … that sounded inappropriate … I just want someone to get work done while I nap. 🙂 And I’m super glad you guys have had such an awesome summer, so happy for you!!

  14. Wow, no demarcation between conscious and unconscious productivity — you’re really taking this “beyond borders” thing to new heights. You win!

    • Oh no, there’s definitely a demarcation: the productivity begins when I am unconscious, and ends when I’m not. 🙂

  15. So happy you get to have a “real” summer, and not just a still-working-but-my-kids-are-home summer, which seems like it would suck.

    I havent’ had a nap for a long time, maybe if I fall asleep my husband would clean?

    Jessica
    stayathomeista.com

  16. I think Auntie Bliss should come, take care of cute kids, nap, and you stay up and get stuff accomplished. I too dream my ideas, so tell me what you want me to dream on while I’m napping there.

    ~Bliss~

  17. LOL ~ I’m super jealous!! Both of your napping prowess (I can’t shut my brain down to nap — ever!) AND of your super-efficient-DIY-dude-while-the-wife-naps husband! Cabinets were a score ~ can’t wait to see the shelving!
    xo Heidi

  18. Kelly – you do your best work when you’re napping!! You need to up your naps to two per day – just imagine how much you’ll accomplish!
    Kelly

  19. I knew I liked you but now it’s confirmed. I like nap people. Good people take naps. Nate isn’t a napper. What did I marry? Oh wait, that’s right..he gets crap done while I nap. We are geniuses!!

  20. So glad to see you’re having a great summer, Kelly! Lounging around with Andy and the littles sounds perfect.
    How exciting that he was able to score those cabs at a yard sale – that is unbelievable! You are inspiring me to give my laundry area, the site where I spend time daily, a little love!

  21. Napping promotes productivity! That is the statement that I will try to sell to my boss tomorrow… I am almost certain he will agree as he is fond of a good nap too! In other news, I can’t believe that you got those cabinets for $20, you and Andy are like the royal family of bargain hunting!

  22. I love naps. I tell hubby if I could ,I would sleep all day 🙂

    P.S Beautiful family pics at the beach!

  23. NO LIE KELLY!!! I found cabinets and we did the exact same thing….centered them on the wall and we’re building open shelving around it! We bought the Pure Bond plywood and followed the steps from Haven for reimbursement! But your shelves will probably be built wayyyyy before mine. I’m married to a procrastinator. He would be the one taking naps 🙂

  24. Hi! Stopping by from MBC. Great blog!
    Have a nice day!

  25. Doesn’t fix the asymmetrical issue, but if you remove the fixed panel from the end of that corner cabinet and installed that set on the right, you’d have your open shelving (more or less) in the middle.A little trim and/or crown molding and presto, it’ll look like it was always supposed to be there!

  26. Thanks for the awesome idea! I am currently in the stencil step of my laundry room. I am so excited about this little makeover :). One question though…do you have steps/tips posed anywhere on how you attached the “floating” shelves to the cabinet or wall? My husband and I are a little lost as to how you have them up there with no signs of brackets or anything!

    • Hi Ash. Yay for your makeover! I’ll try to clarify the shelves a little bit. They are screwed into that cabinet on one side using pocket holes (Andy uses a kreg jig for this. It’s one of his favorite tools if you don’t already have one.). On the wall side, he screwed a small board directly into a stud in the wall and the shelves are sitting on top of that board, and screwed into that board from the top. You might be able to tell a little better from this pic: http://viewalongway.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ed_WMIMG_9708.jpg

  27. thank you for the awesome idea..its really very helpful..its good to install cabinet on the wall as it take less space..

Trackbacks

  1. […] top of the priority list for Andy this summer (after playing in the “pool,” relaxing, hitting the beach, and giving me lots of naps) was to build us a custom desk for the office.You might remember that […]

  2. […] if I’ve finally posted the finished pictures of my laundry room makeover (see part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 of this project…) …I feel that I owe you an apology. We didn’t finish […]

  3. […] wondering why its horn-straightening surgery went tragically awry. source UPDATE: See part 1, part 3, part 4 and part 5! P.S. If you’re looking for ACTUAL real projects today, check out some of […]

  4. […] piece, but Andy worked his magic on it to remove that weird corner section and add a new side. (See that post here.) We peeled the cracked laminate off the cabinet doors and repainted them white. Finally, we […]

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