Everyday is a winding road...: Closet Remodel- Part 2. (Build & Redesign)

As I mentioned in my previous closet blog, my husband and I were too busy to build the closet that I designed. So, we hired a family friend to bring my vision to life.

The most important part of my closet remodel was the shoe shelving, which later became a shoe closet. Before the remodel, my shoes were stuffed under my clothes on tiny racks. I wanted to have an area of my closet completely devoted to housing my shoes in an orderly, convenient manor.

I didn't want my shoe closet to look like a bunch of shelves on a wall, especially since we have textured walls, so I bought paneling to put up behind the shelves. In my opinion, it gave the area a very polished, clean look.

I have a shoe addiction, so I had to dedicate a large area of my closet to my shoes. I intended on providing enough space for the shoes I currently had, plus room for my future purchases. The shoe closet area measured out to be 60" W X 14" D, which ended up being too small. (More on that later...)

Unfortunately, when you have someone else doing the work for you, there's not really an opportunity to 'test' things out. When I did the measurements for my shoe shelves, I had the bottom shelves designed to be larger to accommodate my boots and stacks of flip flops, and all the rest of the shelves measured out to be 7.5" (distance between) to accommodate my heels. Most of my heels are 6" or less, so I thought I was in the clear. However, since I didn't consider the size of the MDF, when the shelves were constructed, they measured 7.5" from the top of one shelf to the bottom of the other- leaving me with 6" of space between b/c the actual shelves (MDF) took up a little more than 1.5" of space by themselves. Turns out, even my 4" heels wouldn't fit in 6" of space. At a later date, we had to completely tear apart the shoe unit and reconstruct it...again, more on that later.

We decided to go with wire shelving because I initially thought the corner shelves would provide extra room for my clothing, seeing as they wrapped around the closet instead of 'dead ending' to the corner area. Sadly, I feel like they're a complete waste of space and I'd be better off with wood. Too late. Another problem that I encountered with the wire shelving came after I decided at the last minute to change my original plain wire choice in exchange for the 'freeslide' wire shelving. My husband suggested that I get the freeslide racks because clothing flowed seamlessly down the length of the rack- according to advertisements. My NYC apartment has the regular wire shelving and it does bother me when I have to physically pick up the hangers to move clothes down on the rack, so I decided to go with freeslide. The freeslide racks are slightly larger than the regular ones, which threw off my entire closet design. (Since the clothes hang lower on the racks, they hang over the racks below them.) I wouldn't care as much, but they aren't 'freeslide' like promised. Depending on the size of the hanger and the outfit, things get stuck as they're being moved. So, really...I didn't do myself ANY favors with the wire shelving. I should have saved money & used the dowel rod alternative!

I needed space for my dresses and space for my other clothes, so I used MDF as a divider. This was the final product before the redesign:

After putting only a small portion of clothing back on the new shelves, I realized that my clothes wouldn't fit in the space provided. Due to the window on one wall of my closet, MUCH needed space was left empty. I didn't want to cover the window for several reasons, but after seeing the lack of space with the first design...I knew my only option was to cover the window.

After tearing apart the windowsill and prepping the area, we went to Lowe's to buy paneling. I planned on buying the same paneling that was used behind my shoe shelving, which cost $22 a sheet. Luckily, Lowe's had damaged paneling on sale for $2 a sheet! I had to paint it, which was a pain, but saving $40 on the project definitely made me happy.

Nailed up:

The paneling took 1 coat of primer and 3 coats of Behr paint + primer to get a decent coverage, but that was nothing compared to the 5 coats of paint that the MDF took!