January 2012: The bedroom walk-in closet

This closet in our master bedroom was really puzzling.  It was lovely and deep, with room for lots of things.  And yet, the only storage in it was a bizarre bent-wire hat-holder thingy on the door, and two hanging rails... parallel to each other.  Oh, and some half-assed plywood shelves along the top.

Seriously, what IS that wire thing on the door?

The rails hanging one behind the other made the closet totally worthless, because you had to wade through the first row of hanging clothes to get to your clothes hanging in the back, like Dr. Livingstone hacking through the jungle.

I guess this is what happens when you buy a house from a 94-year-old widower.

For two months after we moved in, most of my clothes stayed in their moving boxes or were exiled to the office closet down the hall.  Then Steve's parents came to stay with us, and Steve's dad offered to help with some DIY projects. I begged him to build me a proper walk-in closet! Steve's dad was like, "is that really the highest priority with everything else that you need to do?" but when I started weeping and tearing my hair out he agreed to do it.  (Okay, not that bad, but I did beg.)

Steve and his dad pulled out all that parallel-rail nonsense and started anew with a closet kit from Home Depot that included three rails and a shelving unit.  They even moved the light from the side wall to the top of the wall above the door, so it wouldn't get in the way of the new shelving!

The tricky part was the measurement of the closet, which was very deep, but also very narrow, so that hanging rails would only fit in an "L" shape in the closet.  They put one rail along the back wall, for dresses, suits and long sweaters, and then two rails one above the other on the right wall, for shirts, slacks, and skirts.

And then I got a lovely set of shoe shelves... *sniff*

The closet was narrow and the left wall was too shallow for another clothes hanging rail, so instead, we got some flat shoe drawers from Ikea.  (More shoe storage!)  Steve had to be clever about putting those in, because there was molding all around the bottom of the wall, so he had to cut the molding for the cabinets to fit flush on the wall.

We hated the hardware that came in the box, though, so I went back to Home Depot and picked out some Martha Stewart cup pulls, which Steve dutifully installed.

So here is the "before" and "after" shot.  The total cost was $118 for the closet system, $160 for two Ikea shoe racks, $30 for the fancy cup-pulls on the shoe racks, and a weekend of Steve's and his dad's time.

Before: a vast cavern of wasted space.

After: Hanging rails! Shoe racks!  And yes, the weird wire hat-hanger thingy is still there.

There is even room for a rug in our walk-in closet.  A rug!

Maybe the men thought this closet was not a high priority, but I was so overjoyed to finally be able to unpack my clothes.  And as Steve's TV DIY hero says, "Happy wife, happy life."