Amost there . . .

If you've ever seen Star Wars, near the end of the movie, when all the X-wing fighters are in the trench of the almost-completed Death Star, coming up on the exhaust port to shoot proton torpedos to blow it to smithereenies, and you hear one of the pilots keep saying "Almost . . . there" while taking heavy fire and trying to focus with the targeting computer on something that Luke Skywalker could hit like the womprats back home, that's what keeps going through my mind on this closet. It kinda feels like that, actually.

I got the first round of varnish on the drawer fronts and the pocket door, and all the hanging poles and got all the touch-up painting done in the closet! Yay!! Things were looking pret-t-t-y amazing.

All I had to do was a second coat of varnish, because the can says I have to, and I am typically one to follow directions. I thought the drawers looked pretty awesome. The oil varnish had really brought out the dimension of the grain, and made the drawer fronts look very rich and satin-ey and smooth-like. I thought, "geez, I hate to do anything more. this looks so amazing right now. but I should follow the directions on the can, because they're the manufacturer, and they know better than I" Hogwash. Complete Hoakum. What a load of Crap. Bull$#!^.

I went ahead and pulled the brush carefully across each drawer front, mimicking what I did last time because that worked out so well. I repeated exactly what I had done before. Completely different results. The end product, while it looks fine, has too thick a coat of varnish on it. It's ever-so-slightly gummy, and in this round, seemed to catch a few cat hairs in the finish that weren't there before, even with taking extensive steps to avoid it. Because, as everyone who has ever owned a cat knows, they are TRULY a PART of YOUR LIFE, forever and ever, AMEN. So long after these cats are dead, their DNA will live on. Sigh. Gummy and Hairy. Sounds like a new kid's cartoon for adults featuring a toothless granny and her Pig-Pen-ish terrier.

So I didn't do another coat of varnish on the door. I did, however, do another coat on the hanging poles because HW was worried about wearing the poles out quickly with all the sliding of hangers. I did as asked. And those won't matter as much. But I'm disappointed with the drawers.

Luckily, I had not had enough room to work on the cabinet tops, so I've learned my lesson well enough for that next endeavor. One coat. Directions be darned.

I got all the drawer pulls painted a glossy white and we installed them. They look quite sharp with the mahogany-stained drawer fronts. Oh, did I mention that when I went to buy stain that would closely match our mahogany vanity top, the stain color that matched best was "bright cherry"? It's pretty lovely, even if it's mis-named.

So, drawers are in, poles are in, HW went to work on cleaning the hardwood floor. All the painting's done. Then I couldn't take it anymore. On Saturday afternoon, I moved in. Even without the chest of drawer tops. I've just left the top drawer empty until we can put that top on. I have REAL drawers for the first time in 2 years! And my stuff fits!! With a little room to spare! The closet looks AWESOME!!

Even though it's a bit tight in maneuvering space (we won't be able to do calesthenics in there), we can get a lot of crap in there. It's not quite as big as our Stepford closet was, but it will do just fine. I've been working on paring down my wardrobe anyway. :o) Once HW saw that I had moved in, he caught the bug and he did the same. So even with drawers packed and clothes hanging, we can easily get in there and get clothes when needed. So phooey to the "closet design" people online, who would not, under any circumstances, allow me to put hanging poles on one side of the room and chests of drawers on the other. It can totally be done. With room to spare. It's not a dressing room, people. It's a place to store our crap. We live in the real world. We don't need 10 feet of "dressing space" in front of our hanging stuff. We can actually put clothes on in our room. Shocker.

Once we have the drawer countertops on, we'll know how to design the cubbies that will need to hang above the countertops and work on those in the coming weeks. For now, though, it's lovely thinking that we have a closet and that HW doesn't have to go to another room to get his clothes. We still have to walk through a construction zone of the rest of the bathroom to get them, but hey, I'll take what I can get. And maybe this weekend, he'll finally connect some electricity so we can have light in there.

The other big thing that happened was that I found a shell of a vanity to convert! The thing is kinda hideous now, with crackle two-toned paint all over it and it has the smell of "old lady" to it. But the whole entire thing is going to get sanded down to bare wood (eliminating aforementioned smells), retrofitted drawers, reconfigured openings, and voila! a new vanity!

Actually, I know there are some long days ahead working on this thing. But it has TWELVE drawers already, it's the correct length AND height AND depth, and someone already built it, so there's a lot less design and effort we have to do now than before. And I might even be able to do some of it without HW around, since I cut my retrofit teeth on the guest bath vanity. My craft will need to get a lot better because I have big plans for this thing being awesome, but at least it's a start.

We had to go to Durham to get it, and wouldn't you know it was about 2 inches too long to put it in the truck and close the tailgate, and it was raining, so we chose to drive the back streets to get home, strapped in and wrapped in a tarp like the Clampetts. Normally the whole trip should have taken 2 hours, tops. It took almost exactly 3. But we have it, and by God, it's gonna be awesome some day.

Still have a ton of sanding and mudding in the vanity area and poo room to do before we can work on the vanity anyway, but with a closet almost entirely done, and a poo room halfway there, I can envision being done sometime in September :o)