Create a Closet

This is another installment in the occasional series of my home improvement projects. You can find other installments here (closet into an office), here (installing a faucet with nonsensical instructions), here (installing wood laminate flooring), and here (home improvement replaces Buns of Steel).

This was a fun job and involved no blood loss. A first for me, I think.

Here's the setup. I moved into an old Victorian house. It's been added on to several times, with rooms just sort of stuck on here and there. Basically, I had three living rooms. Upstairs there are two large bedrooms and one that's merely an over-sized closet. No one wanted that room so the cat got it. So if each kid got a room upstairs, I had none.

Plus, I don't do stairs, or rather, my knees don't do stairs. And the heat and A/C don't work upstairs. So clearly one of my three living rooms needed to be my bedroom. And one was perfect, set apart from everything else by a doorway that had held a set of doors, which I replaced with curtains. It just didn't have a closet.

I tried using the closet under the stairs but it was small, dark, and left no place to put coats. I also got an armoir, but had the same problem. I also used the closet in the cat's room. A combo of all three held my clothes but was a pain to try and find anything and still required trips (sometimes multiple) up the stairs.

So I decided to put a closet in my room.

I'd installed closets before, so I knew I could do it. I just needed to find a system that was free standing since I was going to mount it directly to the wall and it wouldn't have any end supports. And I found one.

I made measurements of my clothes in different categories--shirts, pants, long hanging dresses--so I'd know how much shelf space and hanging space I'd need for each group. Then I found a kit that came close to what I needed. You can create one yourself if you don't mind using heavy duty wire cutters and trying to count how many little clips and brackets you need.

But before the fun stuff, you have to clean. This was the area I was going to put my shelf in.


And this was all the stuff I had to get in that area when the closet was done.



And I'll show you how I did it in the next installment. I'm sure you just can't wait.