New Built-In Closet

Well the weekend was nothing but rain so I was not able to get outside and finish the pond or sealcoat the roof, so Saturday afternoon I decided to build one of those closet kits from ClosetMaid for the first floor bedroom closet.

The original closet has never been touched in the four years I have lived here and so it seemed like an easy weekend project to tackle. The picture to the left shows what the closet originally looked like.

First thing was to pull down all the existing wire mesh shelves which doubled as a clothes hanger bar as well. There were lots of giant holes in the plaster once everything was down so I thought I would try and do a quick plaster job to clean up the walls. This took a couple of hours to set and in the mean time I decided to add a wall safe. I had bought one about 8 months ago and it had been sitting in the garage for an opportunity just like this one. So alas, the wall safe was probably the easiest thing to install, all that was required was cutting out a 14" x 14" hole between studs and mounting the safe with the lag bolts that screwed into the studs. Once I have acquired mounds of cash and do not know what to do with it (assuming this house is actually fixed), I will be able to store it in the safe... but I digress.

After the safe was put in, it was pretty late so I decided to call it a night. The next morning I got up, and painted the walls a light olive green color and the trim a sharp white. The walls were all plaster and had never been painted before! Of course I really hadnt noticed until I started painting. So it was a two coat paint job, the first to seal the wall and the second to make eggshell finish look like eggshell finish and not a flat finish! By late afternoon on Sunday, I started assembling the shelves. I bought a kit from ClosetMaid and everything went together really easily and quite quickly too. The hardest part was cutting the steel shelves (which I did with a metal blade in a jig-saw) and anchoring the shelving supports to the plaster walls (a hack job with toggle bolts and 3" wood screws).

To finish off, I installed a new light fixture as the previous one was just an exposed light bulb. The closet is done but all of the clothes and items that need to be stored are still being sorted through and of course there must be 10 loads of laundry to tackle.

New clothes rack under the staircase niche

New dresser and shelving

New light fixture

Cool James Bond safe