This Saturday we took it upon ourselves to build some storage in three of the closets.
The room of requirement closet was pretty bare. In fact, there were only some remnants from the closet system that was there before. Not even a usable rod!
We went to Home Depot and bought a Rubbermaid automatic closet system. It was completely configurable and we put it up in less than an hour. We ran into a bit of trouble getting started though--neither of us had ever put an anchor in a plaster wall before. And either our stud finder wasn't working, or the studs in this house are wavier than a roller coaster. It all worked out okay though and our finished product was pretty awesome, easy, and relatively cheap. This room is, by definition, full of the overflow from the rest of the house. We needed it to hold lots of stuff!
Moving upstairs: the guest bedroom closet had a few 2x4s in place but not quite enough to do anything. Seeing as how this room will be my dressing room/guestroom the closet needs to be able to be used as storage for sweatshirts purses shoes etc.
We bought a few more two by fours to finish out the framing and then put a few one by eight white wood planks down to complete it out. Ta da! Automatic storage. (note: for how non-girly-girl I am, I really do have a lot of shoes.)
Moving onto our bedroom closet, when we moved in all there were only two long clothing rods that we needed to supplement. Our apartment closet had actually been really big and was able to fit all of our clothes. Austin's side wasn't too bad once we put in his dresser but my side needed some help. We bought a clothing separator thing and a bookshelf (note: those white bookshelves are only $21 at Target! Expect a few more of those to pop up around the house!) to put my clothes. We still have two dressers sitting outside of the closet for now--we'll see where those end up.
Finally, our house doesn't actually happen to have a mudroom or a coat closet. For now it doesn't look like the kitchen will be acquiring either of those things so we had to make do with the little nook at the top of the stairs.
(This was just testing it with two tension rods--we replaced the lower one with a real anchored rod and made them both level).
We hung a clothing rod between the walls, hung up all of our winter coats and rain jackets, placed the hats scarves gloves etc. as well as Austin shoes on the floor, and closed it all off with the shower curtain we had originally used the bathroom downstairs. (There has been a little switcheroo there but I will explain that later). The color actually works out really well because it ties together the blues in the two rooms on either side. It's hard to see on an iPhone pic but the master on the left has the darker blue and the guest on the right has a pale gray blue. We will probably change all of these colors somewhat (and maybe actually add doors!), but this works for now.
It just gives a little happier view walking up the steps than the blank little nook which had been there before.
Yes we did all of that on Saturday. A very long and very productive day. And now we don't have anything on the floor that's not supposed to be there! It's the little things in life that make me happy.
