Tiny Walk-In Closet, part III

You've seen this view before, though without the light.  You still aren't seeing it with the light, though...not really.  I can't turn it on.

But you haven't seen this view yet:

Ta-daa!

"Shelves in the closet...happy thought." - Elizabeth Bennett, Pride and Prejudice

I am SO happy with my shelves, but that is what runs through my head every time I look into the closet now.  That, and an Eeyore-ish "I'll probably never have nice, neat, cute bins for my shelves."

You know, this is like one of those Find the Hidden Treasure photos...can you see them?

Treasure #1: This photo looks almost EXACTLY like my dream for it

#2: Dave and I got to work together to make something tangible in our first home as a married couple

#3: We got this far in the project in just 2 days

#4: They didn't cost a dime!

But I'm what?  Disappointed?  About not buying boxes I like?  I can be so easily defeated and ungrateful sometimes.  But then I call myself all kinds of horrible names and beat myself up for feeling the way I do.  And then I hear in my head:

Self-knowledge is difficult but grand, self-pity is easy but mean, but self-mutilation is a travesty - both torturous and evil.

I made that up myself.  But I think God had something to do with it, though...He does talk to me, I just sometimes think I'm talking to myself when it's really Him.

Little roadblocks.  Ego.  Cute little selfishnesses, a "nice" sort of greed, and a touch of vanity followed by the "humility" of self-scorn and derision.  It doesn't take much, really, and I'm off the rails and tumbling through a wilderness I wasn't supposed to venture into...

*Sits lost in thought for a moment.  Oh dear, you're all/both still here? Oh, one of you got bored and left, but you're still here, anyway!  Well, then, let's move on, shall we?

This is my handsome new light, bought for an exorbitant sum off Etsy.  Free closet make-over, radically expensive light fixture.  But it is pretty, isn't it?  It has a wall plug-in and a pull chain.  You'd be surprised how hard those are to find.

But guess what?

It takes a weird, tiny-based bulb.

Which we don't have.

I was going to buy the 3-pack at Costco (they each last 15,000 hours or something like that)...but Dave intervened.  So I am being patient.

I did go on and run the cord down the back/side of the closet, behind the shelves on the left.

Say hello to the outlet-that-doesn't-work-but-is-otherwise-perfect.  I've got my non-functional light plugged into an extension cord instead.

So the extension cord runs by my feet and out the door, but at least the light cord isn't dangling by the door jamb.

BUT....

...or so I hear.

And I do believe it, I do.  And really, I don't want to just complain.  It is a beautiful closet now...functional, accessible...we did a good job on it.  Dave was a wonderful sport and a great partner on it, and it was good to work together on our first project (and my first time on the circular and jig saws).

So here's the result, after much waiting and anticipation:

Is it perfect? No.

Do I love it? Yes.

Am I grateful and therefore happy?  Yes, Yes, and Yes!!

Will there be additional projects in this part of the house? God willing.

Thanks for playing, you guys.  Hope your projects are just as wonderful as this one has been...and thank God for the imperfections, because even they are a gift (and probably a better one, too, because I didn't know I needed them so badly!  Mine teach me better than most sermons).

So what are your imperfections teaching you lately?

Or are you currently ignoring them?

Or angry at them?

...and why?

Tiny Walk-In Closet, part II

First the bad news:  project Not complete.

Second the good news: there will be a "Tiny Walk-In Closet, part III"!

Here is what we got immediately after the paint dried:

The right side of the closet is SS shirts high and dresses and pants low

I actually did manage to hang all my clothes in my new tiny walk-in closet.  After all, it was exactly the same pipe, just cut into thirds.

The left side of the closet is LS shirts and sweaters/jackets with shelves below.

I haven't really needed the utility step stool to reach the high stuff, for some reason.  So the build-your-own-beautiful-step-stool project I had in mind just got bumped down on the priority list.

(I forgot to mention...we bought nothing for this project except screws and that leftover paint.  To hold the ends of the rods...

...we cut a big sideways "C" into pieces of scrap wood to cradle the rod ends. It required a free-handed jigsaw...the process reminded me a lot of sewing, actually.)

(I do wish there were something useful I could do with that blank back wall...)

"How is this not finished?" you ask.

Well...

First, there's this problem on the right-hand side of the closet.  The longer shirts hang down into the lower rod (we considered a shelf between the two layers, but at the time considered it "unnecessary"). 

Then there's the problem of not having any storage bins for the 4 new shelves I have on the left-hand side of the closet (no pics, sorry).  I had wanted to get these

 from IKEA, but there isn't one within easy reach...so I can wait till our next Pittsburgh run, or buy the stupidly expensive ones from Target or Lowes, or make something myself from wood or cardboard.  Feel free to make suggestions.

Then there's the problem of having no light in the closet unless I drag over the floor lamp (the room's only source of illumination so far).  There is an outlet inside the closet underneath the lowest shelf...and after we finished the closet, we discovered it doesn't work.  I had cut notches in the back of each shelf to run a cord for a hanging lamp, which I think will now be useless.

Oh, and I still had too much stuff in there.  And that's with already having got rid of some!

Someone told me once (or I read somewhere) that by eliminating all the random hangars in your closet and springing for the more uniform look of identical hangars, you achieve stress-of-the-eye relief, even if you do nothing else to the mess. 

Dave already owned a ton of wooden hangars, so this part was easy and pretty painless (not counting the gouges I got trying to manhandle this pile of hangars around the house. Did you know Goodwill accepts donations of hangars? They do.).

And then, as expected, I ditched these two big bags of clothes as well.  We carted all this off to donate (with some other things not pictured) on the same day I pulled it out of the closet; extra points for us!

So...I had hoped to have a proper "before and after" series for y'all...but I don't.  Not yet.  This is all I got.

But you gotta admit, considering everything, Dave and I got a pretty decent amount done in the last 13 days.  I'll be at work for the next 2 weeks which means,

I'm back to dreaming again.

Hope to find something to write about in the interim, but there is not much for me to do so far from home except read and surf the internet.  Maybe I'll write a story...would you like to hear a story?  Maybe I'll write you a story.

PS. Has anyone not been on Pinterest yet?  You must.  I will invite you, if you need an invitation (otherwise you go on a pretty long waiting list).  I am a pinning fiend when I am bored, and I pin some very interesting, I may say "inspiring", things.  You probably would too, if you were on it as many hours a day as I am.

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!)