The Hand Me Down House: Closet Reveal

Have you all been just itching to see what's behind my closet doors since you read my teaser post last week?!? :) Just kidding! But I really could not show you what my closet looked like with out being able to show you the pretty makeover part of it.....I didn't want you all to stop reading and run screaming from your computer screen.

Before I show you -- this is the closet in our entry way of our house. It's one of my favorite things about our house. It's a huge closet my dad put in that's almost the same size as our entry. It's a fantastic storage area -- for everything from shoes, to coats, to Christmas boxes, -- we store a LOT of stuff in there. Alright -- it's time for the before picture.

EEK! See what I mean? I'm really not a complete slob -- I promise!! :) It just was a poorly organized and designed space -- and it needed help. Especially since when people come over I ask them to put their shoes in there so our dog doesn't take them an hide them. How embarrassing -- at least I could ask them to put their shoes in a cute closet -- right!?! I wanted to leave as much of the middle open as possible -- not only does it make the space look bigger, but then there's more space for guest's shoes and purses and bags.

So step one was to clean, clean, clean. Seriously -- it took me almost as much time to clean out the closet as it did to make it pretty. Plus this was a good time to go through coats and shoes and give them away.

Once it was all cleaned out and I had a clean slate to work with, I painted the walls. I chose a darker color because I knew I wanted to paint the shelves white and I felt dark would be okay. I was a bit nervous since I'm usually a play-it-safe-neutral/light-colored painter. But I absolutely LOVE the color I picked. It could be my new favorite. It's a little grey, a little brown and a little purplish -- perfection!

Next step was to install shelves. I drew up plan before I started and made my plan specific to what I needed to store in that closet. Some of the main components being stashed in there are coats, shoes and boots, luggage and Christmas boxes. We also keep some of our counter top kitchen appliances in there -- you know the ones that you don't use every day. Knowing what I wanted to store made it 100 times easier to decide what kind of shelving I wanted to do. I also knew that we wanted a place to sit down near the shoes to take them on and off. And I knew I wanted a mirror so I could make sure the was no paint or sawdust in my hair before I leave the house. :)

My first part of the shelving was to cover up the wire shelves that were there already. I could have taken them down and put up similar shelves, but I figured I could work with what was there -- plus they were really secured into the drywall and studs. My solution was to just cover them and make them prettier. :)

I bought white shelving boards that were the right depth and cut them to the length of each shelf. I laid them on the top of the shelves and then took trim and attached it to the bottom. I actually missed one of my shelves when I was measuring so I had to improvise with regular boards instead of the white shelves. It ended up working out just fine though -- nothing that white paint won't fix! :)

Once the shelves were all up and covered I got down to the bench and shoe shelf. I attached a 1 x 12 (cut 18" high) to the firmly secured shelf that was already there (you could attach it to a wall, or use a shelving bracket to secure it to a stud).

I then cut two pieces of wood the same size for the other "legs". I laid a long board over that to act as the top of my bench. Once the frame was built for the bench, I added a decorative trim to dress it up.

I did the same thing for a "luggage cubby" I built to house all our luggage and bags.

The last thing I did was I hung an unused curtain underneath one of my lower shelves. I hid our fold table and chairs behind there along with some odds and ends that don't have a great place to go in my closet.