The Master Closet – Part 1

I’m back! And first, I’ve gotta say, winter has just been dragging on… and on… and on… here in Madison. What makes it most unbearable is that when you think it’s over and the snow has finally melted it decides to snow again! 

WHY!?!

Within the past week the last few patches of snow have melted from our yard and it’s actually starting to look like Spring is on it’s way. But you never know… we’ve had snow before in April. 

To be honest, we didn’t do too much work on the house this winter. It’s really hard to work on dust making things in the garage when it’s cold. And you also can’t paint or stain anything because nothing dries properly in temperatures below 50 degrees. So things have been on hold for a few months.

Now that it’s warming up we’ve finally started to tackle some of the projects we’ve been meaning to get to this year.

First up is the master closet. 

This is the only “before” photo I have, sadly. I never took any photos of the closet because it was usually a pretty embarrassing disaster inside. This angle only shows the shelf unit that was inside. But once you were inside and turned to either the right or left side there was one long bar on each side to hang clothes with a shelf above. On my side, the rod was almost falling off the wall. Literally was just hanging by a thread. 

This past week Max and I both got frustrated enough by the lack of storage space in the closet that we decided to rip the whole thing out. It was about time for a change anyway since this was the original closet that was built for the house in the 70’s. 

The whole demo was complete in about a few hours after work one night. Things went so quickly that we didn’t take enough photos. After moving out all our clothes and furniture we removed the shelving in the closet and stripped all the carpet off the floor in the closet and master bedroom. Then we patched any holes in the master closet and painted it with a fresh coat of white paint (Yes more white. Shocking, I know).

Once the carpet was out we went back and forth for a bit on what we wanted to do for the flooring. But we ultimately decided on laminate because:

(1) The dogs. Although real hardwood would have been beautiful, we knew it would be scratched and ruined immediately by the pups.
(2) We could install it ourselves and save a little money on the labor costs.

After lots of YouTube research, a trip to Menards, and some patience, we installed the laminate floors throughout the whole master bedroom and closet. We still need to add some trim around the base boards and it will be complete.

Here’s a little preview of what the floors look like so far with some of our furniture moved in. 

And as for the closet, we are now planning the layout. The entire room is about 5 feet by 7 feet (a decent size, but not huge).

Some our the must haves for the new closet layout include: 

(1) thin drawers built in for jewelry and organizing smaller items
(2) high and low hanging rods to maximize the space we have
(2) one tall rod section to hang dresses
(3) shelf space for shoes, folded sweaters, and Max’s t-shirt “collection”

I’ve been looking at lots of different closet companies lately and trying to price out how much it will be to get the schnazzy closet of our dreams. It’s actually been kind of fun playing around with the different configurations. There are so many possibilities for arranging the space.

This is the design that I came up with. I’m currently chatting with a designer at a closet company to try to figure out the best layout for us. Hopefully everything will be finalized soon and we can get to installing it! 

Before, Closets & Storage, Home