come on now, show me what cha workin' with

so.... last post i gave you a sneak peek at my shoe closet. it's but a drop in the bucket as far as the makeover i'm DIYing on my downstairs basement room. A LOUSY DROP!

my hubs has been nice enough to give me full use of that nice big room to make half my dressing room and half my office/work room - SO NICE! well, i think before you can fully appreciate my hard work and compliment me on it (*wink*) you need to see the starting point.

please note three things:
1) these pics were taken with my iphone and are of sucky quality - forgive!
2) after our DIY wedding extravaganza i dumped anything and everything in this room and shut.the.door. until i had time to deal with it again... it's very messy but just look past all of my crap to see what i'm really trying to show you here.
3) i do not currently have photoshop or other cool tools that let you write on pics (that i know how to use... dumb) at my disposal so i'm going to get a bit wordy explaining things to you... feel free to just look at the pics.

alrighty! here we go!

so, i keep referring to the room in halves but that's not accurate. when you enter the room from unstairs there is a smaller side to the room on your left -this is the "half" i am turning into my dressing area - and a larger portion of the room lies to the right - this is the "half" i am turning into my office/work area. since i plan on using this post as a teaser for the mini reveal of my dressing room as the week goes on, i'll be focusing on that "half".

just so you can see it for now, this is the larger portion of the room which will be my office.

while it is larger, it only has the one wall of built-ins while my dressing area has two.

here you see it as if you were standing in the smaller portion of the room

THIS is the side i've made into my dressing area.

here you see it as if you were walking into the room after coming from the upstairs slash main living area of the house

here you see it as if you were standing in the larger (office) portion of the room

the door from the upstairs is to the left and the door into the garage/laundry room is to the right

**please note that behind that big chalk board leaning against the wall are the two doors that open into what is now my shoe closet - you can kind of see the doors if you look closely. the shoe closet is about chest height and about 3.5 feet deep. **

and this is just to show you the paint color and the fulgy outlets and outlet covers i've been working on replacing!

the man who had this house built in 1955 was a handy-man kind of guy himself and he apparently built this room in the basement himself... AND all of the awesome built-in shelves and drawers which now house my clothes. in all of the upper storage areas there were adjustable shelves and then below that super deep drawers... that smelled and looked like someone had been raising ferrets in them since the 1950's - vomit.

the first thing on my agenda was to clear out all of my crap and paint the walls white so that the room would be lighter and more airy... and to match the upstairs which i've painted white as well. (i'm having a prolonged scandinavian moment.)

then, i got to work on cleaning out those storage areas. i scrubbed and cursed and held my breath, but i finally got the drawers aired out and clean enough that i felt i could safely store my folding clothes in them without smelling like a homeless person. my jeans, pants, sweaters, tees, tights, socks and undergarments live there now!

in order to have hanging space for my other clothes i took out the shelves in two of the upper compartments and hung clothes rails. these now hold my shirts and skirts.

lastly, i cleaned and painted the inside of the small closet to hold my dresses and purchased a rolling rack to divide the space (dressing room designated from office) and to give me a bit more privacy when dressing.... although i'm the only one down there and no one can see in, it still feels weird to strip down in the middle of a (pretty much) big empty room. the rolling rack now holds my jackets and belts. (real coats are stored in the coat closet upstairs.... yes, i have enough jackets to fill a rolling rack... yes, it's crazy.)

i was unable to change out the sockets for white ones seeing as how i do not do electrical work but i plan on doing that sometime soon. until then, i just replaced all of the outlet covers with white ones to match the walls and blend in.

i've already drafted the post with the mini reveal of the dressing room so check back tomorrow to see :)