Tutorial : Hanging Purse / Diaper Bag Rack

I was going to call this Hanging Coat Rack, but lets be real, it's like 100 degrees here in Florida, and there is not a coat in sight around this house!

I made my mail holder for my office almost two years ago.  It's held up great, and we use it all of the time, but there is one problem with it.

See that purse?  It's a wee bit small to fit all of Kalia's stuff in when we're heading out.  So the mail hanger has gotten to be quite crowded with all of our various bags we keep stalked up and ready to go around these parts.  We've got a Mommy bag, a Daddy bag, a gym bag, and a beach bag that we hang regularly, along with the bjorn, Kodi's leash, and few other miscellaneous things.  The hooks on the mail holder weren't cutting it anymore.  They work just fine, we just need more.

I saw this on One Kings Lane and immediately got inspired to do something about it.

Image courtesy of One Kings Lane

This was perfect, and with some left over scrap wood, I knew I'd be in business.

Here's how I recreated my own version.

First up, I got out my scrap wood.  My dimensions wound up being pretty close to the inspiration piece, although I think mine is a little bit taller.  It is 25" x 9".  The small boxes I cut into 5" squares.

After all of my little boxes were cut, I sanded with 150 grit sandpaper.  I sanded until my arm almost fell off the edges were round and pretty.

I used these three stains I had left over from my American Wall Art I did awhile back.

I stained the back board white, and here's what my little blocks against it looked like :

After that, I taped my little blocks and stained with the white...

...then the blue...

...and finally I taped,

and applied the red stain.

When I was done, I was left with this :

I gave it all a little bit of distressing with 200 grit sandpaper, focusing on the edges.

I purchased hooks at my local home improvement store, and traced out where I wanted the holes to go....

...and then pre-drilled out the holes prior to installing the hooks.

After that, I just installed the hooks and used wood glue to apply the blocks (using my laser level to make sure they were all even), and viola :

Storage solution fixed!   I hung it in our laundry room, which is the perfect place to drop off the bags as we come in and out of the garage.  Now we've got two storing options.  If we come and go out of the front door (which we do when we jog or bike down to the Y, Publix, or the park), we've got the trusty mail holder, and now when we come and go out of the garage, we've got this!

Most of the time at least one of these bags is in the office room on the mail holder, but I put up all of the bags we had sitting on top of the washer (which drives me bonkers), and snapped a quick pic before having to go rescue Kalia from doing some sort of suicidal activity...like trying to drown herself in the toilet!

So what do you guys think?  Anyone else have a million bags hanging around, or are we the only ones that like to switch it up constantly?

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Happy Monday!

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Laundry Room Redo

I'm chucking this one up to psycho husband, not psycho wife this time.  Normally I'm the go-getter and starter of projects around this house, but Chris takes all the credit for this one!

We've been looking for a new washer and dryer for quite a few months now.  I told Chris when we were redoing the front doors that he had to put his search for the perfect washer and dryer that were perfectly priced on hold for now.  I couldn't handle dealing with the door issues and trying to figure out what the hey washer / dryer I wanted, and where had the best price, at the same time.

Well, the door had been in for a good week before Chris decided to resume his washer / dryer hunt.  And he found the perfect washer/dryer for sale for 25% off both.  So last weekend, we tredged our tails up to Lowe's, had them price match a set from Best Buy, and came home with a delivery date of Thursday for the new set.

Our laundry room has been in a sad, sad state since we moved in.  It's one of the rooms we've yet to touch.  The fact that we came home from this with 2 days to spare before my official due date didn't bother Chris at all.  Chris took out the old appliances before I could snap up a few before pictures, and it was late when I was taking this, but here's sort of where we started :

Here's  a picture of our old dryer to give you an idea of what we were working with before.  This thing was on its last leg!

Saturday morning, while I was finishing up Kalia's nursery monogram, Chris spent quite a bit of time cleaning out the old dryer vent.  Wowzer...that thing was most definitely a fire hazard, and I'm so happy that he got it done before Kalia gets here!

We decided the only expense we were willing to incur for this laundry room redo was the actual washer and dryer (they're expensive enough, even on sale!), so for the rest of the laundry room, we used what we had laying around.  Chris painted the walls leftover gray we had from Kalia's nursery (Moonshine by Benjamin Moore), and I painted the laundry room door Lucerene by Benjamin Moore.  We took the laundry room door off to sand it down and paint it.  I think we were daring Kalia to arrive.  We have a thing with having doors off while I'm entirely too close to labor (see here).  Chris painted most of the trim work...I helped some, but he gets to take the credit for most of the work.  After all of that, we were left with this :

Which was such an improvement, but those stupid laminate cabinets were driving me nuts.  We thought about pulling them off of the wall...but we're not sure what's behind them, and neither one of us was really willing to get into dry-wall work.  So the cabinets stayed.  I lived with them for a full day before deciding there was no way they could stay that color, so I got up early Monday morning and primed the cabinets.  When Chris got up, I was sitting at the computer, and he wasn't very happy to see paint on my hands!  He was a good sport about it though and helped me put on the two coats of white paint (Ultra Bright White by Behr), which isn't a perfect paint job, but it really makes the room look so much better!

These cabinets are temporary anyways, but I can at least live with them this way.

On Thursday, the Lowe's guys showed up with our new washer and dryer...

We actually had a laugh at Kodi's dog bowl.  That's the first piece of furniture Chris and I built together, quite a few years ago.  When we redid the kitchen at the old house, we had the granite guys take the leftover granite from our kitchen sink cut out, and make the top for this using our dog bowls for cut measurements.  They hesitated initially, but we told them it was either that, or we'd go elsewhere.  They obliged!

The trim in here finally matching the white doors looks so much better.  Only 2 + years in the making of getting rid of all of that old awful off white trim!

I love the new color of the washer and dryer too!  Maybe I'll actually do some of the laundry now!  Chris would be oh so happy with me.  The only "gender tasks" we have in our home is that Chris does Kodi's poop patrol in the backyard.  He drew the short stick somewhere in here.

Ahhhh...SO much better!!!  We've got a few things planned to finish over this laundry room...building pedestals, adding some wall decor, and as previously mentioned, removing those cabinets and adding some functional shelves up there, but this is such a huge improvement from where we started!  And...I absolutely do not plan on doing any of that this weekend.  At 41 weeks pregnant, my 'mojo' is most definitely running out!

Hope everyone had a great week and enjoys their weekend!  Today is Chris and I's 5 year wedding anniversary.  I'm so thankful, lucky, and blessed to be married to the absolute perfect soul mate for me.  Chris is not only everything I could've possibly wanted in a husband, he's my very best friend in the entire world, and I can't imagine a single day without him!  Happy Anniversary babe!!  (I know, enough mushiness...sorry!)  When we got married, everyone started asking us when we'd have kids.  We told them all we planned on waiting till we had been married for 5 years or so before expanding our family.  We didn't really intend to make it this close to our 5 year wedding anniversary, but that's what you get when you have two engineers in one marriage I guess!

Happy Friday!

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