And the bathroom is....

....still not finished! My progress seems to have slowed to a snail's pace. Things have been busy at work and the kids have kept me running.

And speaking of running, I finally started  again after a five month blame-it-on-the-reno hiatus. I've  gone out for a few short runs with Tessa. You can call me Queen Multitasker - I figure I might as well kill two birds with one stone and exercise us both.

I did mange to get the linen closet in the bathroom all finished up this weekend. I started this project a couple of weeks ago, and it looked like this - all bare walls and no doors.

You might recall that the doors lay on the bathroom floor for days (maybe a week!?!?) while I primed and painted them.

I had some old wooden shelf boards from an Ikea shelving system we were no longer using hanging around on the porch, so I decided to reuse them in this closet. It saved me from having to go out to the lumberyard, and it it got rid of some stuff that we would have had to store or toss out.

So I dragged my handy old table saw from the basement into the backyard (well, I got Alan to do the heavy work - and by heavy work I mean moving the saw, not actually operating it) and cut the shelves down to fit the closet. They're just under 15" deep - the perfect size for stacking towels and sheets. I cut some 1x4 lumber to use as shelf supports, nailed them to the wall, gave them a coat of primer and two coats of paint in the trim colour, and voila!

On Friday night I ran out to HomeSense to look for baskets or bins. Oh, how I love that place. I found some pretty ones, just the right size for storing bed linens.

On Saturday I unpacked all the rest of our towels and linens that were still in storage. And I did about six loads of laundry 'cause it turns out that I hadn't packed them quite as well as I thought I had. Plus I'd used some of them as drop cloths to cover furniture and other assorted stuff piled in the bedrooms on the third floor during the reno.

 

Isn't it a thing of beauty? I already had the wicker baskets. The ones on the top shelf hold all of our extra toiletries, and the one on the middle shelf holds our washcloths. All of the small things that are hard to stack and make a closet look messy are neatly tucked away in pretty storage.

So the closet is finished. For now. I'm not completely thrilled with the flat-paneled doors. I feel like they lack a little verve - especially next to the five panel entry door. That door is a pretty close match to the original doors on the upstairs bedrooms. 

I used some small antique glass pulls that I had removed from Matthew's dresser and they look really tiny. I think some more substantial hardware would help to dress them up.

And for the final shot - I love my new pocket doors on the bathroom and laundry room. They are awesome.