Giving the Hut a New Look

For those of you that have been to our house or have heard us talk about it you've either seen or heard about "the hut." For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the hut is what we call the small concrete structure that we have sitting in our back yard. All of the lots in our area are zoned "R-2," which means that they can have up to two residential units in a single lot. We're not sure if the hut was ever used as a dwelling but for us it works as some much needed storage.

The hut is 250 sq. ft. and the interior was in poor shape when we bought the house. It needed a new coat of paint, the linoleum tile was grey and ugly, and there was the frame of what was once a closet stretching from wall to wall on one end that was now just a bunch of 2x4s and '70s wood paneling.

One Saturday while Bridget was pregnant with Owen I decided that I was going to take down the closet frame to buy us more room for storage in the hut. Since Owen is now over 9 months old you can infer how long ago that was. Since then I've been working for an hour or two whenever I have had time to turn the hut into something a little bit cleaner and more organized. As of today I finally finished.

The finished look

In the end, as you'll see in the pictures, it turned out OK. I put a coat of primer and paint on the ceiling and all of the walls, ripped out the tile on the floor and put down a coat of primer and concrete stain, and installed the Rubbermaid FastTrack system along part of one of the walls to really help with organizing some of the bigger items.

The FastTrack system really helps to save space and better organize larger items

I am quite impressed with the FastTrack system. There are a number of systems like it on the market, but this one was at my local Home Depot and the whole thing including the two tracks and all of the accessories on which to hang everything cost me $150. Since I was hanging the rails on concrete instead of drywall I could not use the screws and anchors they provided. So I drilled holes using my Bosch hammer drill and used 3/16" x 2 1/4" Tapcon screws to secure the rails to the wall. Pretty sure those rails aren't going anywhere. The FastTrack accessories just snap onto the rail, no screws or tools necessary, so I can rearrange things within minutes if needed.

It was a long project and took about 12 times as long as it should have (sometimes having a baby to take care of will do that), but I am pleased with the result. Now, the only question is what project do I tackle next???