Blowing the Doors Off

I'm going to try to keep this brief. Between work, life coaching, traveling to Canada and Santa Ynez, trying to participate in the occasional social activity, and managing the upkeep of multiple properties, this girl hasn't had a whole lot of time to blog. However, she has had time to paint and organize stuff at the future wine country abode.

Before Mr. W left for Vancouver, we decided to take the doors off this closet in the new house's hallway and paint it the same soft grey we chose for the walls. I couldn't be happier with the choice. It looked like this before we moved in:

Now it's filled with books and games and pictures and DVDs:

I think it'll add a little interest for visitors when they venture from the dinner table to the bathroom...

I also decided to remove two of the bedrooms' closet doors last weekend. My parents were visiting—celebrating their 49th wedding anniversary. Don't you want to applaud that? It is seriously impressive that people can stay together that long. I look forward to celebrating five decades with Mr. W someday. Anyway, with their helpful hands at the ready, I was able to remove and repaint 8 doors. And laugh hysterically as my dad flapped around like a wild man when he walked into a cobweb inside one of the closets...

 

Now instead of the old garish yellow doors, I have nice clean white ones.

Bye bye buttercup.

In the spirit of door removal, I also decided to take apart some of the kitchen cupboards. Here's the before (before we moved in, that is):

And here's how it looks now:

It's kind of amazing how much more this one little change opens up the whole kitchen. I can't wait until we gut the whole thing and have some other open shelving for our ridiculous mass of cookbooks. (The picture above represents about 1/4 of the collection...)

I'm sure I'll have the house just the way I want it by the time we're ready to start remodeling. I guess that'll allow Mr. W to have more of a say in how things go and not feel so much like I'm designing the whole house without him. And I'm sure that'll move us a step or two closer to that five-decades-of-marriage goal...