New Closet Space!

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about our new family budget, and all of the house projects that I wanted to plan out.  Well, we finally were able to accomplish one of our my projects...the master bedroom closet!  Now, amazingly enough, I was able to transform this closet for about $50.  The closet in our master bedroom was just so not working for two people.  There was only one level of dowel rods, and one level of shelves all the way around.  Also, some of the dowel rods were behind other dowel rods making it nearly impossible to see or get to the clothes in the back corners.  Hopefully the pictures help that last part make sense.  Here are some of the Before pictures

So as you can see, all of our things just did not have places to live inside the closet.  Once I put on my "organization" hat, I could tell that this space had so much potential.  So, we got to work!  The first thing we did was clear out the entire closet.

This also meant that our room was kind of a disaster for the time being...

Once the closet was cleaned out, we hubby began with the demo of the old shelving.  The demo, and the fact that he got to use almost all of his power tools, was definitely a selling point to get the hubs to help me in this project!

Once we got all of the old shelving out (required some of the power drill, some pounding with the hammer, and some football watching on my part - heehee) I was ready to paint.  I have learned from Jen over at IHeart Organizing that to make a space like this more like a room, you need some color!  I chose a really soothing blue/gray color from Lowe's that is a paint and primer in one.  I thought the contrast of the blue/gray walls with the white trim and white shelving would look really sharp.  So I set to work taping all the edges and wiping down the walls to get a clean surface.

I used Frog tape.  Finally after an hour or so, and some awesome paint fumes inside that little room (I highly recommend using some sort of fan or air circulating device...whew!), we were done painting!

Looks so much better right??!  Already an improvement over the dirty white walls with crayon on them from the previous owners.  We let that dry over night.

Then we moved on to the shelving.  Now, here's where I got lucky.  My parents own a Sign Shop so I was able to get some "scrap" wood (referred to as MDO) from my Mom.  MDO generally comes in a 4'x10' sheet, painted white, and is 1/2" thick (SCORE!!)  So hubby and I picked up some of that scrap, brought it home and cut it down to size.  Here was my plan:  All shelving on the left side of the closet, two dowel rods with shelves across the length of the back wall, and one dowel rod and shelf along the right side of the closet. Can you picture it??  Well, hopefully these photos help.

We used little strips of the same MDO to create supports for the shelves and used drywall screws to put them in place.  We also had bought some support brackets at Lowe's to hold the long shelves along the back and the dowel rods (the hook looking thing in the picture above).  After some more time of measuring, cutting, and leveling, we finally had all the shelves in.  We made sure to leave one shelf taller than the rest so that I could fit some of my boots in there.  I was so excited, that I couldn't even wait to start organizing!

Once all of the shelves were in, I spent the next couple of hours giddily organizing and arranging our new closet :)  Hubby got the top row - since he's taller, and I got the bottom row.  The row on the right is up at the same level as the top row, which I use for long dresses and such.

I still plan to do something similar to this on the walls just inside the door way for some of my heels.  But for the most part, our closet transformation is complete!  We did it in one weekend and I am loving the new space!  Here is our cost breakdown:
Paint - $30
Dowel Rod - $8 (we also used the original one to save on that)
Brackets - $11
Wood - $0 ( I recommend trying to find a sign shop or something similar around your area that might have scraps that you could get either for free, or cheap)
Time - 2 days

And what transformation would be complete without some Before and After pictures??

Thanks for reading!