The first house that Jon and I bought (the one in Cordova) had an incredible master closet. It was huge - about 8 feet wide by probably 15 feet (or more) long. Our second house's (in Oakland) master closet was just a tiny bit smaller, but still quite big. Our current house's master closet is pretty small compared to the last two (8ft x 5ft), but it's still big enough...just needed to make better use of the space. Since our current home does not have a linen closet in the master bath, one of the closet shelves was designated for towels and bathcloths. The first thing I had to do was make a new place for those. I made a pullout drawer for one of the bathroom cabinets - instant linen closet!
This is what it looked like before. These shelves were made out of pressboard. They looked ok, but the surface was rough in a lot of places. Each side had double hanging rods with a small space for long hanging clothes at the back. The long hanging was hard to access because the shelves were so deep. There wasn't much space for shoes, so the closet floor was always covered with shoes. The last pics are what bugged Jon...screws and holes all over the place and the carpet.
Demo on this closet was awful! All the screws were 3 inch screws, and most of them were stripped and had been painted over. Jon had to help me on some of the demo, because some of those screws just wouldn't budge. After everything was removed, I patched the holes in the walls.
I built the drawers first. They are the same width as the previous shelves, but they are not as deep. Scarlett was my little helper when I was building the upper shelves.
I love a nice, white bright closet, but I decided to line the walls behind the clothes with cedar planks. The main reason I went with cedar is because it's a natural insect repellent. Our bedroom is on the side of the house near the woods, and we found several brown recluse spiders on our bedroom floor shortly after we moved in. Getting rid of the overgrown flower bed outside our bedroom (and pest control) helped a lot with spiders - I haven't seen any for some time now. But one can never be too careful...I have a fear of spiders crawling into shoes....
Cedar also absorbs excess moisture in the air. Our closet is between our bathroom and the laundry room. We don't have a problem with mold/mildew on our clothes, but I figured it couldn't hurt anyway.
Since the closet shares a wall with the laundry room, I was able to put in a little laundry chute below the upper shelves. It's just a little window into the laundry room...there's a laundry basket on the other side of the wall to catch the dirty clothes. No need to keep a laundry hamper in the closet anymore :) I still need to make a door to cover it...the draft that comes through there is cold!
I will probably redo those drawers someday. This was only my second attempt at ever making drawers, so they aren't exactly perfect. They work just fine for now though.
My side has long hanging and double hanging rods. Jon's just has double hanging rods all the way across. And yes, this closet is staged. I didn't put all our clothes in for the pictures - it looks neater when it's not packed full.
Shelf for hatboxes and a new floor to replace the old carpet.
Jon's side has a valet rod and a shoe tower all the way up. No more shoes on the floor!
I love our new closet! I didn't think I'd ever get it finished, but it was worth it. Jon was very patient living with all our clothes all over the bedroom while I worked on this.
