My Tiny Walk-In Closet

This is my closet.

It is what's called a "reach-in."
We believe it was an "afterthought," added long after the "room" was originally "built."

It also serves to "hide" a "big hot tube."




Multi-funtional closet? Why yes, yes we do.

Unfortunately for me, this seems to have been the primary purpose for building this particular closet. After hanging my clothes along the 67 1/2" long ultra-heavy-duty rod, I quickly discovered that the only hanging clothes accessible were the 20" worth hanging directly in front of the doorway. The rest of the clothes were juuuuust visible, hanging way back there in the shadows. Unreachable.

So Dave and I went to work.

We cut that bar into 3 pieces, nearly equal in length (I'll get to that in a second).

We removed the barely-useful overhead shelf.

Check this out:

We think they weren't sure where the studs were, so they just pounded a nail every inch or so and hoped for the best.

(We removed all those nails, btw, and reused all the boards for this project).

We painted it white with some leftover paint from the kitchen.

(The pink stripe is where the old red wallpaper is still shining through. We didn't remove it because we were scared.)

(See? If this is where the last guy was content to leave it, that wallpaper may actually be serving a structural purpose. Heaven forbid we took it down and then had to re-hang the drywall.)

Then, of course, we stopped for lunch/dinner.

...and when we came back, we discovered that the studs in this wall ARE hard to find. Go figure.

Dave used a punch to dig into the wall and ferret them out...this had almost no effect on the beauty of the wall. And we did find most of the studs we needed.

We used scrap wood for every shelf in this closet!
(And we REALLY should have sanded that finish off!)

See that big gap on the left? Yeah. This awesome closet was not built square. So our squarely cut shelves did not exactly fit. There is a matching gap on the front right of this particular shelf. We figured out for subsequent shelves, that each should be cut square, then shaved off at an angle on one side giving a uniform 24" front and backs that ranged from 22" to 23 1/2" wide. It was funny after the fact.  (This is why our rods are not all the same length...the closet changes depth from left to right.)

Think I can fit all this fashion fabulosity back into my new tiny walk-in?

Well, you're right. I should probably get rid of some stuff first.

There.

Okay! Let's LOAD 'ER UP!

(Final closet installment coming up!)