In case you missed our little prologue to the changes we’ve been making to our master closet, here’s a reminder of what our closet looked like about four weeks ago.

Left side:

Right side:

We had new flooring (ceramic tile) out of necessity, but pretty much nothing else had changed in this room during the two years we’d been in the house, including the hideous popcorn ceiling.

Before I started this blog, I got to know a spray bottle of water and a 4″ putty knife pretty well during the hours I spent up on a ladder, scraping the popcorn texture off the ceilings in our kitchen, dining room, entryway, and hallway. Needless to say, smoothing out the ceiling of our 75-100 square foot master closet wasn’t exactly fun, but it was nothing compared to the other 700 square feet I’d already done in the rest of the house.

I was telling somebody the other day that I imagine the process to be somewhat like childbirth – painful and torturous while you’re doing it but when you see the end result, you suddenly forget how bad it was and you’re ready to do it all over again!

Eight hours on a Saturday, and we went from popcorn to pretty smooth in our closet (and master bath)!

Just for laughs, here’s a peek at the mess I got to clean up afterwards.

I learned my lesson with other rooms in our house and knew I couldn’t just paint the ceiling without doing some spackling work beforehand.  This time I decided to try priming the ceiling first and touching up the rough spots afterwards since having the ceiling all one color would really make the shadows from the uneven spots obvious.

After priming, I smoothed everything out with touch ups of quick-dry spackel, and then it was time to paint!  Since the closet is directly off our master bath and is exposed to lots of moisture, I decided a semi-gloss finish was the way to go.  I actually tried Valspar’s High Hide White Contractors Paint and was surprised at how well it covered for an “economy class” paint.  Two coats on the ceiling, but only one was necessary on the walls.

After hours of effort on the closet ceiling, I knew we would have to change out the boring 80s globe light fixture and replace it with something fun.  Or it could have been the fact that I broke the globe light when I was prepping to paint… either way, it all worked out in the end

I had grand dreams to construct a beaded chandelier with those lampshade frames I mentioned here, but after researching the cost of 100s of colored beads, I started looking at other options.  One day, while I was out picking up some real estate signs I’d ordered, I stopped into one of my favorite local thrift stores.  I sure am glad I did because I came across this sweet woven light fixture for $5.  As luck would have it, it actually worked when I got it home!

After cleaning it up a bit and adding some purple and white spray paint, it looked like this:

I purchased a canopy conversion kit for $5 at Lowe’s and Stephen helped me convert the plug-in light to a hard-wired fixture.  We clipped the chain and cord…

… threaded the cord through the ceiling plate

… split the wires and joined them to the wires in the electric box in the ceiling.

Safety first – of course we turned off the breaker to our closet before taking down the old fixture and putting up the new one!

Less than $15 later, and viola!  A smooth glossy white ceiling and a revamped retro light fixture.

I can’t wait to share the rest of our closet makeover with you.  Come back soon to see the finished result!