Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Skeletons

A few months ago Aaron and I started discussing revamping our master bedroom closet to better suit our needs.  Our bedroom closets are fairly large, but the way they were set up was just not working for us.  So I drew up some rough plans and Aaron thought nothing more of it.  Then the weekend came.  Aaron was supposed to go climbing, but that plan fell through at the last minute and we suddenly had an entire weekend with absolutely no plans.  We knew we wanted to tackle a house project and when Aaron suggested the closet project I was immediately on board.

We did some measuring to confirm my plans and then headed to the Home Depot for supplies.  We decided to use a high-grade plywood for the shelving unit we had in mind after being very pleased with it the previous weekend when we used it to build something else.  We also needed to pick up 3/4" trim for the exposed edges, tracks so we could have adjustable shelves, new and slightly longer hanger rods, and a shelf to span the back wall on top of the shelving unit and rod brackets.  We reused the rod brackets from the old set-up so we didn't need to buy those.  We knew we would have to go to the HD with a cutting plan since we had no way to get the whole 8' x 4' piece of plywood home.  We had them cut out the side panels for the shelving unit and cut the remainder of the board in half so we could fit it in the car. 

When we got home we went to work on another project and almost finished it (the wood was too wet to paint, so that project is on hold until the wood dries out).  Since we had the saw out we made a few cuts for this project, including notching out the bottoms of the side panels to fit around the baseboards.  Aaron also took the time to sand down the edges of the plywood before we called it a day.  I don't know what Aaron had in mind, but at the rate we were going I didn't think our closet would be complete in only one more day.

The next morning Aaron and I went right to work with the closet (mostly Aaron though).  I emptied out all of our clothes while he removed the old bars and hardware.  We had some other errands to run, but he convinced me to let him keep working before we headed out.  He got the new bars put up, the track tacked on to the insides of the side panels for the shelving and before I knew it he was asking me to help him hold the side panels in place so he could attach them to the wall.  He used some L-brackets we had laying around to hold the ends of the side panels to the wall and to straighten out any non-square issues with the plywood. 


 



















We ran our errands next, but when we got home we used the leftover plywood to cut out shelves.  Amazingly, we were able to use every single piece of the plywood board for this project and needed no more nor less.  I sanded the edges of the shelves while Aaron finished cutting them out and when he
                                                                                        finished that he wiped down the shelves.




Yes, I'm using a headlamp to put in the clips for the shelves; that's because we have no closet light.  That is another project we have to look forward to.

We may end up painting this at some point, but for now I think we are both happy with the exposed wood.  Plus, who want their closet and clothes to smell like paint?  The project isn't officially complete as we have yet to  put up the trim on the

rough edges of the shelves, which aren't so rough any longer (since I am a master sander), but which have black typing on them.  When we get to it we will glue the trim down with wood glue and use painter's tape as a clamp.  If that fails we will have to bite the bullet and put in staples, making it more likely that we will paint the whole shelving unit.
All in all, we actually saved quite a bit of money making it ourselves and we ended up with a custom design for our closet rather than a factory-made system that didn't quite fit the exact dimensions.  We are both really excited to have a functional closet (we were really lucky in the first place to find an old house with closets as big as they are) and are already planning a closet makeover for the second bedroom!

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