Chapter 3: Closet Plans

Hip hip hooray, today’s the day! Today’s the day, for closet play!

If I were Dr. Seuss, that’s how I would start this blog post. I might even do the whole darn thing in rhyme. But for fear that you’d all abandon me, I won’t.

All of that to say, it’s closet day! (just kidding) But really, we are talking about the Spare room closet and our grand plans for making it into a kick butt office space. If you are totally lost, it’s probably because you are trying to read this novel, starting with Chapter 3 (silly you), so why don’t you go ahead and catch up: here is Chapter 1 and is Chapter 2. Don’t worry we’ll wait here for you. 🙂

… … … … …

Done? Great. Chapter 3 is all about the plan we’ve concocted for the closet… how are we going to turn that little nook into the snazziest office on the block?

If you remember, we wanted to take the Spare room from this:

To this:

Well, that involved us taking a few doors out of the picture and changing the closet that lived behind them into a more easily accessible space.

So let’s chat about what that new space will look like, sans the doors. To get some ideas/inspiration, I scoured Pinterest (what else?) to see how other people have been using their closets to do more than just hang things in. Here’s the main gist of what we’re hoping to create:

see original photo here

And a few other variations that I love…

see original photos (starting with the large, moving clockwise) here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I love how each of these are different, but have similar foundations- a desk of some sort, a place for things, and shelving for storage. Oh, and don’t get me started on that globe lamp/chandelier. Makes my heart race a little. But that’s beside the point. 🙂 So after some major thinking about our own space and what it could look like, we started throwing out some possibilities.

At first we were thinking of opening the whole space up, including removing the wall directly above the door frame (you can see it in the photo above, just above the pair of doors on the left) to provide easier access to those upper shelves. From there, we could have either completely open shelving or create some cabinet doors to keep it as hidden storage. Another idea was to either take out the shoe shelves or build some sort of door to hide them.

Finally, though, we decided that the best plan was to figure out someway to get what we wanted out of the closet space without making any permanent changes to the walls, existing shelving, etc. Heck, we even came up with a plan that doesn’t involve taking out the hanging rod. The reason? Well, we know that this is not our “forever house” and that when we do go to sell, the future buyer is probably going to want a closet in the bedroom. For this reason, we wanted to have the freedom to be able to transform this space back to a closet by just re-installing the doors and not having made any permanent changes that take away from being able to do that. So we had to get crafty.

 How do we completely change a space without taking away any of the existing framework? In addition to this, we wanted to be able to keep some of the previously hidden storage spaces, well, hidden- the upper shelves and the shoe shelf. Some sort of “closing” and “hiding” mechanism so that we could still have a space to stash unsightly bins and containers. Oh, and shoes. 🙂 After a lot of consideration, a few attempts at some plans, and a little dumpster diving to hunt down some pieces that could be made into a desk, here is what we came up with. Don’t be jealous of my super high-tech blueprint…

Ok, so let me explain. On the right hand side are the shoe shelves. The plan is to install a long curtain rod the entire length of the closet so that we can hang a curtain to act as a door that can open and close to hide those shelves that will remain full of shoes. The two upper shelves are already partially hidden by the stretch of wall that acted as a door frame for the doors. But they are also partially visible, now that we took those doors down. To solve that problem, the plan is to put up some bamboo blinds to cover them totally (kind of like this). Everything not outlined in red represents the open space that we can use to put a desk, some storage, and any other office-y stuff. We’ll get more into how the desk will be built in another post, but here are some of the pieces we’re considering for the job.

In the end we’re hoping it will be a really good use of space. We wanted to preserve some of the hidden storage (because that is prime real estate around here!), but also do a little creative thinking for the office part of the plan. The only drawback to all of this? There was A LOT of stuff in that closet that now needs a new home! Namely, all of my dresses and Mitch’s dress shirts, suits, etc. And we are pretty maxed out on our own bedroom closet space, so again- we had to get crafty. And get rid of stuff. 🙂 Not to mention all of the bins and boxes that were so artfully hidden before and will now need a new home of their own.

Anyone want to store some of our junk for us? Anyone?

No one? Darn it.

So that’s where we’re at with the planning, folks. It’ll come together- little by little. Sorry for the lack of “here is our progress!” and “these are the afters!” photos, but this is real life. Right here, right now, the spare room is a mess and I am seriously doubting my ability to come up with yet another method of storing all of our giftwrap supplies. Like I said, real life. 🙂

 Happy weekend, friends!