Our Bouncing Baby Closet

I feel like we birthed this closet renovation. During the gestation period, which was about 4 months, we wondered what kind of closet our giant hole in the wall would grow up to be, we made and revised plans for it, it wore us out, and at the very end, we were seriously uncomfortable. For this delivery, though, Andy carried the weight.  

Click for more photos of the project

Back in May, we hired a contractor to combine two awkward closet spaces in our bedroom into one cohesive closet. The job would take him 2 weeks and was to begin immediately after Memorial Day. Instead of showing up to work on the first day, we got a call with some lame excuse. Ah, the start of an ugly pattern.

The no-show excuses continued at a steady pace – we got em all: car broke down, broken water heaters at other job sites, even the rain somehow affected his work schedule....he had more emergencies than the fire department. After 3 months of excuses and no end in sight, we couldn't take it any longer and fired him. It wasn’t pretty. Want to know what else wasn’t pretty? Me, pregnant and not sleeping in my own bed for 3 months...that makes for one cranky, pregnant lady. 

Sans-contractor and no strangers to home improvement projects, we knew we could finish the job ourselves but we had to shift it into high gear so we could finally move out of the guest room, which will soon be the baby’s room. Unfortunately, the closet required a plethora of pregnant-unfriendly activities before it would be complete – like painting, staining and heavy lifting – which meant our usual work crew of 2 was down to 1.

Andy is a superstar. He slaved over this thing on weekends and in the evenings after work and made more progress in one month than the contractor did in three. The finished product looks fantastic!