When the Husband's Away, the Girl's Will Play

I realize that I am way overdue for the follow-up post about Sarah's home make-over.  If you missed the original post you can find it here.

We left off with plans for what we wanted to do and some of the supplies we got, but I failed to let you in on how it all turned out.  Let's just say that Sarah and I were surprised and a little frustrated.

We tackled the closet in spare bedroom number one first.  Sarah wanted to completely re-organize it and add some space saving shelves to one of the doors.  This picture was our inspiration:

Sarah has a ton of wrapping and tissue paper, bags, boxes, and bows and needed somewhere to put them.  We were able to organize everything she had into this small shelving unit.  We were amazed and how great it looked and how easy it was to put together (no screws!).  We also cleaned out and organized a good portion of her closet while we were at it.  That part of the project was extremely successful!

We also added a few pull-out drawers in her kitchen cabinets.  The first one we decided to do was for her dog food container.  Word to the wise, always make sure you can easily pull the drawer out (with the container in it) before you install!  We skipped that part and found out that the container was unable to come out of the drawer all the way.  So, we had to return the first drawer and buy another one.  The second pull-out drawer we installed was for her pots and pan lids.  What a space saver!  I wish I could install one in my apartment!  (I'm a little jealous)

Another pointer: If you're going to install a pull-out drawer always check and make sure (before you start to install it) that the front door of the cabinet can close with the pull-out drawer inside.  It'll save you a few extra minutes of frustration since you won't have to unscrew the screws you just screwed in!  (say that five times fast!)

Hang tight folks, this is the long part of the story.

The very last thing we did was the pantry.  I wish I could say it was super easy and we were able to install it quickly with little frustration.  Not the case.

Sarah bought the track system from Lowes and the above picture is what we hoped the finished product would look like (in an L shape of course!).  The great thing about the track system was that you could add or take away shelves easily and it was a nice and sturdy system.  However!  When we talked to the people at Lowes no one said anything about having to screw the anchors into the studs!  They also didn't say anything about needing a horizontal bracket (which is mentioned in this article!).  So when Sarah first started installing it we could not figure out why we could pull the vertical brackets out of the wall!  We made way to many holes in the wall until we figured out what we were doing wrong.  By that point we realized that an L-shaped pantry (while it was a good idea) was just not going to work in her closet.  We scratched that idea and Sarah decided to go with a pantry like the one in the above picture.

After that I went home because it was midnight and we were both exhausted (plus Sarah had work in the morning!).  A few days later Sarah told me that she finished the pantry.  She had screwed the anchors into the studs in the wall which made a tremendous difference!

I wish I had pictures of all of this but I didn't take any with my camera.

Even though the pantry was frustrating it all ended up working out!  Sarah's husband liked what she did so I would call our entire en devour successful.  And we even learned a few helpful tricks along the way.  I just hope she knows that when I buy a house, I may enlist her help on a few projects.  I think we make a good team.

Have any of you taken on a d-i-y project and it didn't come out quite like you planned?  How did you deal with it?