Armoire Before and After

 As I have said many times in the past, my house drives me nuts. Don't get me wrong. I love my house. But we have no storage space at all. We have no closets except for the ones in the bedrooms. No coat closet, no linen closet. I don't understand it. Who builds a house without a coat or linen closet?? Anyway. I didn't notice it's lack of closets until we moved in. Not that that would have made a difference in the purchase of the house, cuz I love it so much....but it does make me realize to check future houses for closet space :)

So for years now, my coats and linens have been crammed into our master bedroom closet. And I am a complete lover of all things coats. Like....I think I have at least 20 coats....at least. So you can only imagine what a closet full of clothes and then jam packed with 20 coats would look like (not including my husband's) So I needed a solution and a place to put all those coats....and a place for random bedsheets and pillow covers (and don't get me started on how many pillow covers I have :)...if you read my blog...you know ;)...)

Luckily, when my offices moved from a bigger location to a much smaller location, we had a ton of armoires that didn't fit and got put into storage. And then....one found it's way to my house :) Score! So, these armoires were really weird. They were actually built to hide/house a gym. Well, not a whole gym of course, but a place to hide a treadmill and tv and weights. But the treadmill was gone...and no tv... or else that would have been way awesome :) So, instead, just an empty box.

So, I took it and totally redid it to fit my needs and decor :) First up was to paint it my go to color Crisp Linen White from Glidden. This is the best white in my book :) It has enough warmth to it so it doesn't look sterile. This took forever to paint...like seriously the longest time. I mean...it's a huge piece. Like 9 feet tall and at almost 4 feet wide.

 I also decided to hang one of my knockoff Ballard Design mirrors on the end. Since it's rather domineering because of it's size, it looked way to big and had too much a blank spot when you walked by it. So I dressed it up with the mirror :) Odd? Yes, but I love it. lol.

Next was to change out the hardware. I found these knobs at Hobby Lobby. I fell in love with them, especially the color. I wanted to go with something more boring like silver or white...but I knew I had to step out of my comfort zone..so I got these :) .....yes, this is me stepping out of my comfort zone. lol Nothing in my house is red. Nothing.

 As for the inside...Well, I had to punch it up a bit and paint it turquoise. I loved the color and well, I wanted to have some fun. If I was going to paint the inside anyway...I might as well paint it a cool color :)

 I then stenciled the inside panel with this lattice pattern. I've used this stencil on a few of my pieces of furniture..and I think a rug even :) You can find the pattern in the link at the bottom of the post to download.
This is another thing that took rather long to do, but totally worth it :)

 Next was retrofitting it to my needs. So I threw in a clothes bar and a shelf for the bottom. Trust me though, this is not how it currently looks :) Imagine it packed full of coats lol. I just had to take most of them out to show you the shelf. The shelf is a perfect place to hide my weights...and great place to hide the vacuum cleaner also :)
The top is the same color on the inside and are where all the linens are hiding.

The best thing about this...well, there's a couple. It solved my problem about having no place to put my coats ...and well...it was free :) You can't beat that! The only thing I spent money on were the knobs, the pint of paint for the inside and the bar.

Here's the link for the stencil!