If you have a superb memory, you may recall this old post in which I tell you about a corner of our house and my big plans for it. Basically, it was to fix this mess:

If you clicked on the link, you can see just how different a space can be after living in it for nearly 2 years.

The very few and small shelves made it quite impractical and not useful for anything other than a dumping ground for all the junk. Not a good use of space at all.

When my brother and sister-in-law, Nathan and Katie, mentioned wanting to come out for a visit, I immediately thought I could put my handy brother to use! After all, two years of sitting on dreams this small is too long! He agreed to do it (or probably just felt like he couldn’t say “no”), and so my first order of business was to paint the walls in the dining area of the kitchen where this nook is. I was happy to get rid of this weird yellow-brown in yet another room of the house. So we went from this:

to this:

A keen eye will also notice I finally painted over the bottom half that had been primed since the fall.

Then our visitors came and we got right to work, heading out to Home Depot just a couple hours after their arrival! It was my first time buying something from the lumber section of Home Depot which of course made me feel like a legit DIYer, even though I was doing none of the building myself. Nathan worked hard, and did such a good job working with my ideas, even adding a few of his own to enhance it.

Nathan hard at work on his vacation. And his completed project, ready for me to put the final touches on.

So from here it was all me. I wanted to paint the shelves and stain the desk part. So I did that. And then I added some cork board details to the wall above the pencil shelf. I originally wanted to just have a solid sheet of it, but these circles were cheaper at Michaels, and I love the way it turned out! The shelves hold so much more! I was able to empty all my craft stuff out of our bedroom and now I have space in there to put baby clothes, which means I can start nesting, but that’s another post I suppose. I also put all Calvin’s puzzles (which is his current love) up there to enforce a “one puzzle at a time” rule. Ideally, one day I will also get some sort of stacked drawer unit to fit underneath too, but that can wait until I find the perfect piece. I also need to staple all these annoying cables into place. But for now I will just sit right here and enjoy all our hard work. Thank you so much, Nathan!