Dream Closet

One of the unexpected conclusions of our consultation with the Container Store "professional organizer" was to make better use of the space we had. So though she suggested a complicated redo of the main wall of the office, we decided to use her side point to take our clean-up in a new direction: the closet.

With a shoe rack on the door that we inherited from the previous owners (a very inefficient circular knitting needle holder) and a simple shelf and hanging bar, this became the closet for coats that were out of season and original boxes for things we felt we needed original boxes for.

The bottom was beach stuff (collapsible chair, umbrella, etc.) and also the place where we piled items we planned to donate.

In short, not a very good use of space.

And because we were now on the Container Store's mailing list (tricky how they get you like that), we saw a catalog image that we fell in love with:

So well organized! So efficient! Be still my heart! (I realize that no child will ever put his or her things away that well, but please allow me a moment to dream.) We decided this would be a much better use of space than the single bar/high shelf that we had going in there already.

We took some measurements (our space is smaller than the closet in the model picture) and chatted with a store consultant until we got a customized plan and a list of parts. We had a few obstacles - literally and figuratively. First we had the top shelf of the closet, which was resting on 2x4s nailed into the wall. Those boards would have to go. Second, the back wall of our closet had two plumbing access panels (one deliberate, for the bathroom plumbing, and one accidental from when a plumber had to put a hole in the wall to get to a pipe). The elfa system at the Container Store works by installing a top track into studs and then hanging everything from it. So the wall has to be flat. No access doors or other boards.

So instead of making ours exactly like the picture (or at least as close as possible as the size of our closet would allow), we added rolling drawers instead of drawers attached to the backbone tracks of the elfa system. Like this on the back wall:

Here's the shelving wall view:

And here is the door, pretty much exactly like the picture (because door sizes are standard). They convinced me that we can use an "over the top of the door" attachment, but I'm not sure we have enough space for it, so fingers crossed.

At any rate, it was time to start cleaning out the closet before we committed to our several hundred dollar reorganization. Could we even get the closet into the initial shape it needed??

Step one, take out junk - a relatively easy step now that we have the garage attic. And pull off the shoe rack:

Step two (and the step we had to complete before we were willing to order the system) - pry off the boards that were holding the top shelf in place. D was unable to find any nail holes when he poked around, but finally was able to pull them off with a crowbar.

No surprise - it left lots of holes in the walls. But at least now we knew that we could get even walls with no obstacles in the way of the elfa hanging tracks (I'll talk about that more in the installation phase).

We debated trying to patch the big hole on the right, to give us more wall from which to hang drawers and shelving:

 D tried to cut straight edges out of the hole to make patching easier, but it just wasn't happening:

It did make us wonder exactly what kind of walls we have in this house. It definitely isn't drywall but the lath structure we expected to see just isn't there - no framing at all. It looks like drywall layered onto plaster layered onto drywall. Huh? In any case, it was thick and unfriendly looking, and we decided that it simply wasn't worth the effort. This is just a closet after all.

So we decided that if we were going to leave the panel in place, we could put trim around it just like on the panel to the left, so they matched and felt a bit more...deliberate. Here's the left panel:

D bought some trim at Home Depot, pulled out the mitre box, and got to work. Here's the first edge nailed up:

 Then side two and some wood filler. Once it's painted you would never guess it wasn't intentional:

Fast forward a few more days of more spackle and wood filler followed by two layers of Kilz primer (we only cut in once on the edges but D rolled twice), and a layer of Sherwin Williams base white in satin that we had lying in our basement. The closet is a clean canvas ready to go!

Which is good, because I think our work is just getting started...