To fully appreciate where it is now, take a look at how it started out. Here's the before:
Actually, this is a more accurate "before," since the entire shower rod contraption I had made fell down.
This is much better, right?
Last week on my update, I explained how we made the shelves out of shelves that were removed from another closet and scrap wood we had on hand.
I am realizing I should do a separate tutorial on how we built these shelves. They were very easy and now that I've worked with my husband do it, I'm pretty sure I could do the next ones myself. So look for that post coming soon!
And let me just address the big blue elephant in the room, er closet. Yes, I painted it blue. It's been a source of great discussion around here, because some folks think a closet should only be painted white. I say, why? Why not have a gorgeous, velvety blue contrasting against the white shelves? Now it is no longer a closet. It is a small room. A small room that makes me very happy when I walk through the door.
This color is Sherwin Williams Great Falls, but with my tweaking. You see, this is the same color I used when we renovated our powder room, which is off the same hallway as this closet. However I tweaked the color originally, adding black paint to darken it and take the brightness down a bit. It's a long story, but when our house flooded during Hurricane Matthew, I lost my entire stockpile of paint cans. They all got water in them and had to be thrown out. Anyway I kinda forgot about that and when I went to the garage to get that paint I planned on using, I realized it was gone. So that paint was an unexpected expense. Anyway the rockstar paint guy at the local store worked with me to figure out the right amount of black pigment to add, 8 drops. So he named this color Darker Great Falls. I love it.
Because the closet door conflicts with the back door and created chaos before trying to get kids in the door and opening the closet door, blocking the ones still trying to get in, we decided to try taking the door off. We are hoping this will encourage the kids to go straight in after school and put their things away.
I decided to give each of our four kids a shelf, youngest on the bottom shelf and up according to age, really size. The bottom shelf is the perfect height for my four year old. He very proudly puts his shoes in the bin each time we come in. They are each responsible for putting their shoes in their basket or on the shelf. I found these reasonably priced basket weave bins at Walmart and got one for each kid. I got one for me too because my feet are so small my shoes fit in one too. They're big enough to hold quite a few pairs of shoes.
I still kept the boot tray for our rain boots. These aren't all of them, just the ones clean enough to come inside off the porch.
During Summer and Fall I like to keep my beach bags ready to go with towels and our other gear. Those upper shelves will come in handy to stow the beach bags away so they will be easy to grab and go. I moved that white bench in from the hallway to see how we like it in here. The hallway has been feeling very narrow to me lately and I'm enjoying the openness now.
For now I have sun hats and other small items in some baskets I wasn't using anymore.
While we're looking at this shot, I will just say while this ceiling looks vastly better than it did before, it's nowhere near perfect. I can DIY a lot of stuff, but I am woman enough to admit I am not good at drywall. After days of trying and my arms about to fall off, I decided this was good enough.
This was the ceiling before:
Oh I should mention the coat rack! It came out of a closet in our attached apartment when we renovated it. Because there was no stud where we needed to screw in the holder on the left, we added a piece of wood to bridge the gap between the studs and give the holder a strong attachment. I painted it the same color as the wall so it would blend in.
So I think that's pretty much everything! Except you're probably wondering about the budget. One good thing about an entire house being under renovation is the amount of materials we always have left over from other projects. The white paint, drywall mud, wood, miscellaneous screws were all things we had on hand.
Total Budget:
$100
Total Spent:
Paint: $32.03
Plastic Bins: (5) $7.58= $37.90
Hanging Rod Holders: $5.98
Grand Total: $75.91
If you'd like to see all of the "before" photos you can see them here:
Coat Closet Organization Makeover | $100 Room Challenge
And my midway update:
Coat Closet Organization Makeover | $100 Room Challenge | Progress Update
Thanks for stopping by to check out my latest project. And I'd like to say a big "thank you" to Erin, of Lemons, Lavender, & Laundry for hosting this great $100 Room Challenge. Now here are the links to all of the other creative projects from bloggers participating in the challenge. Check these out!