Coat Closet Conquering!

Coming home after a long day at work,  your arms are laden with bags from your stop at the grocery store, a lunchbox with food you hope will still be good for tomorrow's lunch because today you barely had time to get to the restroom let alone try to actually eat anything, school bags with student work you hope to finally look at tonight, your purse and who can forget the coat you're wearing. Dumping your cargo in various locations, you're finally down to the coat layer. Peeling off this piece of protective, warmth you open the door to find yet another obstacle. The. coat. closet. jam. Wedging your coat into the mass of stuff, you vow, "I'll get to it this summer." The voice in your head being the ever constant reminder of what needs to get done.

Guess what...summer is finally here! That means it is time to keep the promise I made to my head-voice and actually take care of the coat close jam. This project came up on a whim one night. Hubbs was relaxing, I was relaxing, the girls were...well, they were around somewhere. Now that they are 12 and 15, they often have their own ideas on what they want to do and it usually involves their bedrooms and technology. If they could figure out how to spend part of the time in their rooms cleaning them, well, I'd be one happy Mama. :) But I digress.

So Hubbs and I were relaxing and I asked him what he thought about putting some shelves down the left side of the coat closet. He liked the idea and said it would be a simple project. If I came up with an idea of what I wanted, he'd help make it happen. SWEET! Music to my inner-designer-ears. Off I went to start sketching and drafting plans. Where is that tape measure again? I know we had last...summer?! Yes, it's been about that long since we've done any projects around the house but that's another post. Or maybe even a series of posts.

Looking all over, I could not find the tape measure anywhere. I started to get frustrated and was ready to blame a kid when I spotted it. Sitting right behind my computer. Doot-da-doo...no one saw that right?

Armed with my tape measure, I set to work conquering the coat closet. It was determined that 12-inch by 24-inch shelves would fit in the narrow space. Spacing them roughly 12-inches apart, looked like we could fit 5 shelves in there nicely.

Fast forward to the next day and off Hubbs, Biggs, and I went to Lowe's. Lil' Miss was at Amma's house waiting for the 90-degree weather to hit so she could go swimming in the "big" pool with her cousin.

We were at Lowe's, standing in the wood aisle. What have I gotten myself into?! So many choices. Too many choices. It's like trying to buy toothpaste or shampoo. I just want something to clean my teeth, hair, in this case, build shelves with. Why so many choices?!

We settled on white laminated pressed particle board stuff. I am sure it has an official name but I didn't actually introduce myself to it. I just wanted to purchase it to bring home with me. What's wrong with that? Next, we were off to find a rod to use for hanging the coats. The existing shelf in the closet was white wire. That sucker was outta there with this project! Looking at the mass of materials that was continuing to grow on our flatbed cart while standing on the "closet" aisle, we stumbled across a major assortment of wire shelving options. More choices!?

In the end, we decided to go with more wire shelving. This decision was 2-fold. One, it is what is in every closet in our entire house. Wood shelves would not match, which would drive me crazy...because I would know even if no one else did! Naturally, I would want to change out the shelves in every. single. closet. Two, the wire shelving was far less expensive and time consuming of a project. So, we exchanged one set of materials for the other and were off.

Once home, we emptied the closet and set to work. Of course, that's when I realized that I didn't actually take any before pictures. I'll describe the scene as best I can. Using your powers of inferring and mental imagery I think you'll get the gist.

The entire 52-inch existing shelf was covered with board games, a poker chip set, a clarinet, 4 dining room chair seat cushions, an old icky pillow, an even older queen size bed comforter, assorted craft items, assorted small child items, random ski hats, a Marine Corps flag (Semper Fi!), and other things I've suppressed from my memory. The hanging portion was jam packed with military uniforms (Go Air Force--did I mention that Hubbs is former Marine and Air Force? = a lot of uniforms), my wedding dress (which you see peeking out), a dress I wore as a bridesmaid in a cousins wedding, coats, coats, coats and more coats. I'm talking LOTS of coats. The floor in the left was packed with 2 tomato boxes of random art supplies I have not used in roughly 10 years. Good thing I was holding on to dried fake snow stuff. You need that stuff all the time! There was the box from the TV wall mount, the stand pieces should we ever choose to take the massive thing off the wall, a can of Fix-a-Flat, random gloves, hats, umbrellas, Christmas boxes and more. In the middle is where Mr. Vacuum lives with all of his lovely attachments...on. the. floor. Hidden behind the uniforms and dresses on the right was our camera tripod. Oh that's where we put it! Of course we would hide it from ourselves!

We pulled every single thing out of the closet and started the project. Hubbs would man the saw. I would man the installation. He knows I like to do stuff myself but do want his help too. So, he helps find ways to make that happen. :)

Hubbs' job!

He cut the first shelf to my specifications and we tried it out. Boo! Stupid door jamb is in the way! We had to problem solve the situation. We concluded that cutting off two of the peg ends would allow the shelves to fit snuggly in the space.

The two peg ends were removed from the left side. 

Once that was done, it looked like this.

Only, there was a problem...the left side was unstable because we couldn't use the wall bracket on that side like we had originally planned. Back to Lowe's I went.

These support braces were the solution. Now the shelves were very sturdy and we were getting a rhythm down. It started going pretty quickly.

I would measure, draw level lines (don't you love our little level guy? He's a little special...his mouth is above his eyes, but we love him just the same. Plus, he's magnetic, which means I could have him upside down and he was just as useful. He doesn't like it that way as much though. He always frowns), drill holes, mount hardware and place the shelf.

Before we knew it, the project was done. We had 4 new shelves. I decided not to put a 5th one because it would have been too high and not very useful after all. In all my excitement, I didn't take pictures of just the shelves. I HAD to get all of the stuff organized on them. Here's what the end product ended up like.

Floor basket has hats, gloves, umbrellas, MC flag

The other shelves house the paper crafting supplies I have...which is an insane amount. There's more than what you see here.

I went through everything and decided what to keep, what to donate and what to trash. The entire back of my car was filled with stuff for Goodwill....and it all came out of this little space!

Mr. Vacuum :) 

You can actually fit coats in here without getting a major workout now. 

Even the baby doll from my very early childhood has a nice little spot to hang out. :)

We still have an entire 8-foot long piece of wire shelf. Hubbs asked me if I wanted to use it in our bedroom closet. Um, YES! He may have created a monster. ;)