It’s Finished!
After eight long weeks of DIYs, as part of the of The One Room Challenge®, a year and a half of construction, and two and a half years since my main closet rod broke, I can finally say it: the closet is done and fully functional!
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You can see a more read more in depth on the process in these previous ORC posts:
Where We Started
When we moved into our home, the walk-in closet was technically functional, but definitely dated. Think wire racks and fruit-themed wallpaper. It also wasn’t maximizing storage in any meaningful way.
Our bedroom added another layer of challenge. While it’s fairly large, almost all of its 17 walls are pretty short, which meant the bed only fit in one spot. The dresser had to live on the wall next to the bed, leaving no space for nightstands. On top of that, the diagonal doors leading into both the bedroom and the closet ate up valuable square footage in each room, and were difficult to navigate around.
When our dream bathroom renovation finally became a reality, it gave us the opportunity to remove those diagonal walls and separate the two doors. That one change created:
- A wall large enough to hold my dresser
- Space for our king bed AND nightstands that are each up to two feet wide
- An additional three feet of floor to ceiling storage in the bathroom
- Five feet of additional floor to ceiling storage in the closet
It’s wild how much space we gained just by reconfiguring one wall.
My Biggest Takeaways
Before this home, we spent nearly a decade in small space living. Because of that experience, I’m always looking for ways to maximize every inch and make a space function as efficiently as possible. When designing the closet, my top priority was eliminating any dead space. With two long, nearly symmetrical eight-foot walls to work with, I initially envisioned an L-shaped layout.
But every corner-based design came with the same issue: accessing that back corner. I also spent way too long considering cutting down IKEA units into custom sizes and I am SO relieved I didn’t end up doing that.
At practically the 11th hour, I landed on a layout with three sections of cabinetry. This changed everything. The small pockets of “dead” space at the outer ends actually made the middle areas far more accessible. The drawers made organization easy and prevented the back-of-the-closet “black hole” effect I always struggled with before.
If you rethink the “L Shaped Closet” into two separate sections, it becomes so much easier to build face frames for, and actually allows for a much more accessible space. The space between my closet sections is very cozy at about 17″, but I can still acccess all of the drawers. The dead space between my units, is also at the outter edges, which makes them easier to reach. The hardest part to reach in my closet, is the long hanging section, which includes all of my long dresses, which are only reached for on occasion.
Everything We Did to Create Our Dream Closet
As we tackled our closet renovation as part of a larger project, which included our primary bathroom renovation. Our contractor handled reframing the walls, installing the jib doors, moving an AC vent and buttoning up all of the electrical work. Once he finished with the structure of the room & painted it all white – I took over with all of the remaining DIY projects to complete the interior of the space.
- Reframed the room to remove the diagonal entrance
- Added new jib doors
- Designed the layout using the IKEA PAX planner
- Assembled and installed all six wardrobes
- Relocated an AC vent
- Added a pine face frame and extended five of the wardrobes to the ceiling
- Installed baseboards flush with the face frames for an inset-door look
- Added trim to the shoe tower
- Primed and painted everything the prettiest shade of blue
- Cut wrapping paper to use as drawer liners
- Installed crown moulding
- Did lots of little paint touchups
- Organized and filled every last inch
Before & Afters
Because everyone loves a picture perfect transformation:
My Favorite Details
As this closet renovation was such a long time coming, I wanted to be sure to call out some of my favorite details that helped bring my vision of a feminine little Parisian dressing room to life.
- Using two side by side 29″ units & splitting 19″ doors in the center, and not using hardware on the 9″ edge doors. It’s so clean looking, and the mirrors opening towards eachother give mall dressing room vibes in the best way.
- Adding the classiest looking polished nickel drawer pulls.
- Hiding the Ikea seams & backing with a french linen stripe wallpaper that was so easy to hang.
- Installing a dreamy scalloped semi-flush light from Aerin for some timeless charm.
- Hand Painting the plastic hardware covers to blend in with the striped wallpaper.
- Upgrading the closet rods to metal ones for a luxe look that ties in perfectly with the rest of the hardware, and detail on the edges of the doors.
- Trimming wrapping paper to use as custom drawer liners.
- Adding the coziest little carpet runner from Rifle Paper Co.
What’s Left
While I’m calling this the reveal, the space isn’t 100% finished. We still need to replace the carpet, but that has to wait until the bathroom renovation is complete. We’re currently waiting on our custom vanity, and once that’s installed, our contractor can finish the baseboards and trim, center the closet light and then once all of the work is done we can get the new carpet & move all of our furniture back into our bedroom for the first time in over a year and a half.
