Thinking outside of the....CLOSET

More house projects ..... I keep thinking "aren't we done yet?"

Honestly, I do enjoy working on various projects throughout the house, but it's becoming exhausting.

One project that I had completed earlier this summer was for our closets. They turned out just as I imagined and for 1/2 the price of what people were quoting us when we shopped around.

Our house is a little older, so we don't have very large closet space. Think your grandma's closets, the standard space in the wall with one long bar across the top, and a shelf or two over the top. With all the clothes and things we have I wanted to install something that would allow us to utilize the space better.

So where do you begin when starting to plan the inside of your closets? I drew out a sketch of what I wanted; a built in look, with shelving in the middle and to the left side double poles, and on the right one high pole for longer items.

We shopped around...

Starting at Menards to check out options and pricing.

Home Depot to look at different items, that might be a different price point. (Because we have two closets to do.)

Went to IKEA, because they have closet systems. But weren't exactly what we wanted, so next was The Container Store store. Unfortunately at TCS they were pricing $1,000 to $4,000 per closet!

back to Menards....

At Menards they have closet organizational pieces that are around $75-$100 a piece. They have a 'built-in' look that I was wanting and are sturdy enough to be able to attach the poles to the sides. Out of the four different choices they had, I chose the ones pictured below:

Since we bought double our total was $350.

For poles, I wanted to continue our industrial metal poles we have as curtain rods into our closet space. In order to help with cost and weight we opted out of the black iron pipe and went with the wooden dowels. With the wood, I ended up spray painting them a black pipe color and then sealed them with a poly, just to make sure none of the paint scrapped off from the hangers onto our clothes.

Dowels: $50

Closet Rod holders $30

Before we installed we needed to pull off the original shelf and poles. I patched and sanded parts of the wall that were damaged. We painted each closets interior with the same white color that our trim is. The top shelf was left in because it's still good storage space. I also left it the bare natural wood color, but it may end up painted later on. ) The two units stacked on top of each other were the perfect height to meet up with the shelf which helped with a seamless look.