MY CLOSET MAKEOVERS

Admin
Jan 22, 2018
3 min read

Updated: Jan 24, 2018

Who what of thought closets were such hard work! Follow me as I showcase my closet renovation.

When my husband and I first started our renovation journey, neither of us thought we would spend soooo much time on the darn wardrobes, linen and coat closet! Every single closet was covered in brown wall paper. It's one thing if it was paint, but as we all know wall paper is a pain to take down because of the glue and small fragments of paper. Unfortunately for my husband he spent a lot of time working on the closets (I already what you're gonna say, so let's hold the jokes for the comedy club :) But seriously, with 4 closets and each one having wicked old wallpaper and gauges and holes in the wall, this was our most daunting and extensive project.

To remove the wallpaper we went the old fashioned way and filled a spray bottle with soap and water and used a scrapper to remove the nasty debris. To help us with the clean up we placed a large cloth on the closet floor so we could easily gather the remnants.

Be prepared to get a workout in! Since our closets have a lot of height, we definitely didn't need to go to the gym to work on our lats, traps, etc.

The end product was almost worth the pain, agony and frustration. I went with a two tone look for the 1st floor closet and applied a lavender/blue for the top and bottom sections of the closet and used wainscoting for the middle. I added a picture to the top part of the closet since we had so much space and little shelving. I figured at some point down the road I could add more shelving.

For the 2nd floor closet, I went with a two tone look again. This time I used the color tan and alternated it with white. The original shelving for the closet included 5 sets of shelves, each set had 3 boards that spanned the entire width of the closet from left to right and didn't provide the ability to see and grab all items stored away. We decided to use the original shelves but make an "L" so we could walk-in and see and put our things away. The end product is much more functional.

“Try to repurpose existing pieces to help with projects.”

The bedroom closets were on another level, my closet had several large holes in the wall and a few small suspect grey markings (since the walls are plaster any prior damage such as water damage can make the walls susceptible to breakage since they are already in a fragile state). Before beginning the project I purchased a mold test kit from Home Depot. Once I collected samples of the suspect pieces and mailed them in, 2-weeks later it was determined the closet did not have active mold and markings could be removed with bleach. Note, anything larger than 10q ft. should be professionally removed.

Once closet was cleaned up, we put purchased a few packs of wainscotting from Home Depot and placed them just on the middle section of the wall closet. We figured we wouldn't put the board on all of the walls from top to bottom because it's not only a lot of work but it would look too overwhelming for such a small closet. Having it in the middle was practical for us since he gave the closet some style but practicality for when the coat hangers hit the back wall.

1st Floor Closet - Before