Custom Closet Makeover

I can attest that a custom closet can save you time and money. Having custom closets in your home can also help it sell faster and may even increase the bottom line.
Wire closets, on the other hand...not so much.
They are probably at the top of my "have to change"  house list, even before laminate countertops or the dreaded popcorn ceiling. Thankfully, we have granite countertops and smoothe ceilings in this house.

We replaced the builder grade wire closets in our last house with custom melamine closets in all the bedrooms except the guest room. I designed custom closets at the time we purchased our last house, so our master bedroom closet was the first space we replaced.

Once you have a custom closet, it's difficult to go back to wire. An adjustable melamine closet is a much better use of space and the shelves are so much easier to clean.
Our master closet is too large of a project to do right now, so we decided to replace the closet in our daughter's room first.

She did a great job organizing everything in her closet, but it wasn't ideal and didn't have any drawers like her last closet did. 
Here's her wire closet before:

I looked at closets from various stores and decided on a melamine organizer from Martha Stewart Living on the Home Depot website. At the time I was looking, these were on sale and we had additional coupon. 

We ordered the ultimate closet kit for the hanging and drawers and

a hanging closet starter kit for the shoe shelf section and a few extra shelf packs.

Martha Stewart offers a shoe shelf section with slanted shoe shelves(which we didn't want) and a shelf section with more shelves, but it was less expensive to order this unit and some extra shelves.

 Everything was taken out of the closet, the wire shelves removed, the holes patched and the walls painted the same color as the bedroom walls. This took most of a Saturday.
We cut the shoe shelves section down to 16 1/2" (from 24") to allow for the space needed for long and short hang. 16 1/2" was enough space needed for 2 pairs of shoes on each shelf.

The closet system sections are hung on a rail and attached to the wall. Once those are installed, the drawers can be put in and the hanging rods installed. We installed the double hang about 41" apart- the top rod is installed a couple inches down from the shelf above. The long hang is installed at about 57" from the floor. This is where Mr. DIY finished on the first day. He installed the top shelves and cut down more shoe shelves the following day. Our daughter couldn't wait to put her clothes back in the closet!

 The  rods and shelf were cut down to 33" wide making the total space for short hang 66".

 The rod and shelf above was cut down to 21" wide for long hang.

The top drawer is shallow and perfect for holding jewelry.

Our daughter brought the hooks she used at our previous house. We will also be installing a towel bar below to hold additional scarves.

Here's the whole closet...

I think we'll be adding another shelf above the drawers and I'd also like to figure out how to add another drawer to the bottom of the drawer section. (I know Mr. DIY can do it!)

So what's on your "have to change" list? Would love to know!

Pam

We spent a total of $541.67 as shown (with tax), and ordered another shelf pack for $24.59

The Hall Linen Closet

Hello friends!

We are still organizing here at downsized Casa Fanatic.

When we viewed our home for the first time, guess which space/spaces we were most excited about? 

It wasn't because the Dining Room was huge or the Master Bath has a big tub. It wasn't even for the large Family Room.  
We were so excited when we viewed this house because there were 3 hall closets and a Master Bath linen closet. We were downsizing and we needed storage space. 

I was so excited about the 4 hall closets that I took photos of them. This is how the Hall Closet looked when we viewed the house. Even though it was larger than the 2nd linen closet we had at our old house, what I didn't notice is that is that it only had 4 shelves. 

So, Mr. DIY headed off to the big box store and purchased one shelf. We had originally thought we'd use the 16" deep wire shelving  that we took out of our Master Bath linen closet, but we couldn't do that since this closet was a few inches wider.
Bummer.

He added one shelf to the top...

...and one shelf at the bottom.

Perfect!

Since we already had brackets left over from other wire shelves we took out, we spent less than $20.

I've been working on hemming some Ikea Ritva curtain panels. They only come in 96" and 118" and we need 101.

 Our porch furniture is still in that last 15 ft trailer/pod in storage, but Mr. DIY wanted more comfortable seating than the bench we have, so he brought home a few chairs from Ikea. Mr. DIY has made many  trips to Ikea the last few weeks.

He purchased some Sektion cabinets for the garage in anticipation of the 15 foot trailer/pod in storage which is storing most of our garage items. These are going to look great once they are all finished and the doors are on. Mr. DIY says he is going to have a clean garage at this house. Can't wait.

Fall is almost here, but the few Fall decorations that we have are in that last 15 foot trailer, so I'm a little glad(not too much though) that it's still too warm in my book, for Fall decorations.

If you missed the other 3 closets (and the pantry) you can see them here:

Master Bath Linen Closet

Transforming A Coat Closet

Pantries(includes the other coat closet)

Happy Organizing!!!

Pam

Organizing The Pantries

This isn't a pretty pantry makeover where we spent lots of money.
Let me tell you right now that moving and downsizing, costs a LOT of money.
How many of us have unlimited funds to spend?
We're not raising our hand here at Casa Fanatic. 
This post should be renamed Organizing: Making Use Of What You Have And Spending As Little Money As Possible, but that name was too long.

There are so many projects here to get the place organized, not to mention decorated, so my goal is to get the house to where it works for us without breaking the bank.

Let me show you what the challenge was....

We were trying to get everything in this (pantry continues to the angle on the left and then to the right about 2 feet)

Brian Stogner

To fit into this:

FOUR 12" wire shelves that are 3 feet wide(full depth), then angled on both sides to 54"wide. To make matters worse, the shelves were held up by shelf support brackets that didn't allow for stacking.

When I was complaining mentioning how I have less pantry space than in our last house, Mr. DIY said we had more pantry space at our 966 sq. ft Mountain Cottage!

Yeah, that didn't help.

You can see the Vintage Style Pantry at the Mountain Cottage by clicking HERE.

I was really stressing  as there were about 8 large boxes of pantry items that had been packed from my 7 foot wide pantry with 16" deep shelves.(we also had a corner cabinet - wall and base, that held pantry items) 

Knowing we were going to a 3 foot wide pantry with 12" shelving,  before we moved, I pared down things that I didn't use and that were stored on both  sides of the pantry returns.

You can see how I organized our previous pantry HERE.


Back to our new pantry:
We used the existing wire shelving, and Mr. DIY added 2 more wire shelves that had been taken out of the laundry room. He purchased 2, vertical shelf supports so that items could be stacked. (the shelf supports were $15 each)

First thing I did was utilize the existing storage on the door.

Then, every inch of the angles were used. Command Hooks were used to hang the aprons and plastic grocery bag dispenser. 

These hooks have been a lifesaver in several places around the house. I love that they can be temporary- If I don't like where I've put something, it can be changed without filling holes and touching up with paint.

One good thing about wire shelving is that you can see what's above.

There, it is....Not perfect, but not bad for $30.

Ok, so I didn't get all the 8 boxes of pantry items in the pantry, but I did get all the food and paper goods in.
That left all the small appliances, candles, plastic utensils, baking supplies, cookie cutters, etc left to store.

Mr. DIY had a GREAT idea. There was a 2nd coat closet in the hall just outside the kitchen.

This closet cost a bit more because he purchased adjustable melamine panels and 16" deep shelves. 

 Baking items...

Small appliances...

See through containers of candles, plastic utensils and some other things we really should use up...

I discovered that Mr. DIY added a 12" shelf wayyyyyy up top. After I took the pics, I moved some rarely used items up there, which freed up more space for cookbooks on the shelves.

Lots of adjustable shelves are a beautiful thing!

The two pantries together give me about 83 inches( I count the angled sides of the food pantry as half); which gives me about the same space I had in my pantry at the old house. Now to work on the 6 ft less of cabinets I'm missing in this house!

Is there somewhere in your house that could use more space?

Pam

Transforming A Coat Closet

Hello friends!

Hope you're enjoying the last days of summer.
Here in the South, we have about 6 weeks of unrelenting heat and humidity. It won't be long now until the days start to cool off. Mr. DIY is still working hard on the closets so that we can be more organized.
A few posts ago, I showed you how he transformed the linen closet in the Master Bath.
If you missed it, you can see it HERE.

The closet I'm sharing today is the coat closet in the little hallway that leads to the Master Bedroom.

When we toured the house for the first time, the owners used this closet for linens.

The closet only had space for hanging and one wire shelf. This wasn't going to work for us since we needed more shelving so the games, cd's, etc. that we stored in the armoires in our previous home. If you remember, we moved both armoires to the new Office/Craft room since that room doesn't have a closet and because the new Family Room is configured differently and they wouldn't work with the layout. I figured that if the hanging rod was lowered a few inches, 3 shelves could be installed to provide a lot of much needed storage space. 

The wire shelf was easy enough to demo and the holes were patched. We'll get around to painting another time. I was getting weary of boxes everywhere.

Mr. DIY installed two-16" fixed melamine shelves and one-12" shelf. It was enough to hold all of the games, cds and some miscellaneous items

I even have a little space left on that 3rd shelf. (Mr. DIY cut two 12" shelves in case I wanted to change the middle 16" shelf to 12". He just stored it on top of the other 12" shelf)

Even though the shelves aren't adjustable, the new closet is perfect!

This past weekend we started putting up artwork, mirrors and Mr. DIY installed some curtain rods.
It's beginning to feel a lot more like home. Here are a few peeks:

I set up the framed chalkboard on the little dresser in the Foyer just like our last house.

Hope you're week is off to a good start! This week we'll be working on closet, doing some organizing, selling a few unwanted items and making our new house feel like home.

Hope today is a good day for you,

Pam