Trim, Trim, and More Trim

I know, I know.  The house is already built.  But I want to make a little coffee table book with these house posts (when I have time, like when I'm in the nursing home) so I'm going to breeze through these posts in the next couple of weeks, more for my sake.  Just bear with me.

Anyway...

Trim was the one of the most difficult parts of the house for me.  While Chris was most concerned with the house's exterior and its architectural features, I was most excited and nervous about getting the trim and cabinetry the way I wanted it.  This was my one chance to get the spaces I had always dreamed of.  I got to plan my house around the fact that I have 5 boys.  Well, within reason... we don't have a urinal, but we did consider it for an hour or two.  I'd been looking at pictures of mudrooms, pantries, closets, and laundry rooms for years, but now I had to pick the one I wanted.  It's such a luxury to be able to do so, but also a lot of pressure when you've never done it before.  I think if I had to do over again, it would be much easier.  I feel like I understand how things are built.  I know how to explain things to the guys who are building them.  I was in SO many situations where the trim guy was standing there, waiting for me to tell them what I wanted, while I was madly flipping through pinterest on my phone, trying to confirm that what I wanted to do wasn't crazy, all the while the kids were running around my ankles.  All in all, I'm happy with how it all turned out.  There are certain things we decided to finish later, like shelving in the laundry room and book shelves for the school room.  I just couldn't decide at the time.

I've had visions of mudrooms dancing in my head for a number of years now.  When we began designing our house, I remember my quote to our architect, "I want it to be less like a big closet and more like a room."  She gave me exactly what I wanted.  I wanted lots of space for lockers.  I wanted it to be the natural entry into the house from the back yard.  I wanted the boys to WANT to leave their stuff there because it was the logical place to put it.  And the room is laughably big.  I'm very spoiled to have this room.  I told Chris, "I've never heard a woman complain about her mudroom being too large."  

Here are the lockers.  There are 4 official lockers with a large middle space.  The lockers are plenty big for the boys to share.  For right now, there's one for Chris, me, and the boys will have to share the other lockers between them.  The bottom slots are for shoes.  The middle part will have lots of hooks.  And the top is just for extra storage... winter stuff, off season sports shoes, and baseball hats.  The size is just right to fit these cheap bins from IKEA, like the white one you see in the picture.

This is the master closet.  The closets were easier for me because I'm not much of a clothes girl.  I just wanted the closets to hold clothes.  It was the trim carpenter's idea to do that shoe rack in the back because it was right depth for shoes, but not wide enough for more hanging clothes.  It would be really cute if I had really cute shoes to put on it, but it will basically be filled with flip flops and tennis shoes :)

Jopie, my tag-a-long.

These are the beams.

This is me as a trim model.  I have about 100 pictures on my phone like this.  Sending texts back and forth to Chris or other designer friends... what about this or that?  Seriously, how did people build houses before smart phones?

Our garage filled to the brim with trim and doors.

This is the pantry, which is right off the kitchen.  One of the things I love about it is that it has great light.  My desk is in here too, over by where Nathan is standing.  I'm way to messy to have my desk in the kitchen.  There's also room for an extra fridge in here.

Cry Cry messing around in his closet.

What the kids do while Mommy is at the house.

A picture of what the mantle will look like.

In progress.

All done.

The upstairs mantle being built.

Next up was the stairs.

I love the way they turned out.

Then there were the bunks.  Because of the way they were framed, they were hard to figure out.  But in the end, I think they were worth all the trouble.

Each bunk has a little shelf and a light for reading.  The boys were very excited about this.

That about wraps up the trim.  Thanks for sticking it through all the way to the end of this blog post.

Next up is paint.