Closet Remodel

Now that we've decided to stay in our house for another year or two, we decided it was time to make some improvements to make it the house we want.  The only real reason we wanted to move was because of space.  But we can make it work.  So time to do some updates since we built our house with pretty much the base inclusions with only a few upgrades.

Our first project:  Master Closet and Bedroom

Between the two of us, we didn't have a WHOLE lot of clothes.  But we found ourselves constantly running out of space.  And the closet was just a place I did not enjoy walking into.  So we decided this would be our first project - and heck, while we're at it, might as well paint the Master bedroom as well.

I didn't take any before pictures, but in the pictures below of the demo, you can tell where our shelves and bars used to be.  Pulling them off wasn't that hard.  We had to use a razer to break the caulking all around the edges that touched the wall.  And then some brunt force to break the glue and pull against the nails.    Then we just used a drill to remove the screws holding the brackets on the wall.

 Once the demo was done, we had to paint the walls.  This was actually a much harder task than it should have been.  The builder left us lots of paint called "Swiss Coffee".  They said it the color of our walls.  But every time I've done touch up, it doesn't match.  So we went ahead and tried it again, and Swiss Coffee looks very brown against the white of our walls.  So we headed over to Home Depot to see if they could help.  We didn't know that they have a program that can do a color match if you bring something in.  So we went back home, grabbed part of the boards we had taken off and did a color match.  The paint matches better than Swiss Coffee, but it still doesn't match exactly.  But once we get clothes in there, we didn't think anyone would notice.

Once the walls were dry, we could start putting the new closet together!  We had bought an organization kit that included shelving - we had to do this because our back wall is so long, that we couldn't find a rod that was long enough (without being like $200!).  Plus, I like the look of shelving in the closet - even though at the time, I had no idea what I was going to put on those shelves.  So the first thing to do was put together the kit.  I'm happy to say that I put it together all by myself - well, with some help lifting the top piece onto the bottom - because I'm not strong enough nor tall enough to do it myself.  We measured and put that on the center of the back wall.  We anchored it to the wall so it won't fall over.

Then the rods and shelves came.  We had a little help (okay a lot of help) from my dad who is a engineer. He helped plan out how to make it all work, and then Brandon did all the heavy lifting and bending and whatnot.  The first shelf took quite a while to install - partly because we had to figure out spacing, and partly because some of the studs were hard to find.  We had to reference our pictures from when the house was being build several times!

TIP: If you are building your own house, make sure to take a LOT of pictures during the framing and electrical stages.  It will help you out emensley later on - we've referenced them for haning TV mounts, building the closet, handing pictures, etc.

Once the first shelf went up, the rest went up fairly easily.  It looked so good, but it needed some finishing touches.  So we went to several stores looking for baskets to place on the shelves.  Who knew finding nice baskets would be so hard!  We finally found something we really liked at Target...but our store only had 3, and we wanted six!  So we drove to another store that said they had several of each color.  But once we got there, we couldn't find them.  We had 2 customer service people helping us try to find them.  They ended up being in the back room.  So we finally had our baskets and I'm really happy with the result.  We moved the laundry hamper to the laundy room where it actually fits in the space peferctly.  This gave us more room to utilize now as well.

Of course, we are still at a loss as to where to store things like our luggage, that used to be in our closet, but now doesn't fit since we don't have the floor space we used to.  But we'll figure it out.  The closet turned out great!

We also painted our master bedroom.  Even though the color isn't a dramatic difference, it still is so much more welcoming when you walk into the room now.  It has a much calmer feeling.  And with our new furniture that we bought with our tax refund, I think our room is just about done.  The only thing left is doing something with the bathroom...but that's going to be a big project!