Pimp My Tackroom

If you recall, I have been working to finish the Taj Mahal of Tackrooms. I've spent the last couple of days tidying this and organizing that, not to mention hanging up all the stuff I had piled up. Here's a tour of the latest customizations:

 First, gotta have the Sign Of Doom. This is actually just to the right of the tackroom door, first thing when you walk into the barn. Da lawyer says we gotta have this... CYA and all that.

 My neighbor down the street (who has three horses of her own) gave me this cute sign after we delivered and stacked 100 bales of hay for her.  I put it over the door into the storage room.

 I had stored all my ribbons in a box several years ago when I no longer had a place to hang them. This week I found the box in the attic, ironed the ribbons, and hung them up. Most of those are from Cash, but maybe this year I'll be able to add a few from Saga?

You'll also note the hanging over-door hooks I'm using to hang up our (super classy) reflective shirts for riding at night, jackets, and a few hats. I also bought one of those hanging shelf things you can put in your shower and hung it off one of the over-door hooks. It's a perfect place for storing gloves and hanging headlamps - 'cause there's nothing quite like mucking in the dark!

The bridle rack is home-made, using the scrap end of a landscape timber cut into 2-inch sections and screwed into a backplate that is then screwed into the wall. Some day if I'm feeling really classy, maybe I'll put brass nameplates on each bridle hook.

 Saddle racks are working really well!

 This is an antique armoire, circa 1800, imported from England, courtesy of my father-in-law. It's actually too tall to fit anywhere in our house, so instead of storing it disassembled in the attic for who knows how long, we decided to use it in the barn to store saddle pads and the like. I think it looks pretty darn classy, and it hides all of the usual tackroom clutter quite nicely! In a pinch, it's big enough to use to store any dead bodies. Ahem.

 To the left of the sink I put a collage of Cash's eventing pictures, and to the right a poster from the 1996 Olympic Equestrian Games in Atlanta. That strange light-colored stripe in the wood is just a spot that still needs polyurethane... oops!

I keep meaning to take a picture of this - MC gave me this doormat for Christmas and it is just the COOLEST! Personalized and everything. You should have heard the SQUEEEE! sound I made when I opened the tackroom door and found this. Awesome!

And just in case you think it's all done and beautiful, we still have to put up the last bit of paneling and trim behind the door. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can get it done next week or weekend!

Still more to do in here, but it's really coming together. It's so nice to walk into such a lovely space every time I go out to the barn!

What's your favorite part about a tackroom that you've seen? Do you ever think about what The Perfect Tackroom would be if you got to build one?