Closetings

One of the many aspects of the house that we found to be substandard was the closets. Maybe it’s the fact that it is 60 years old, and it appears that they have not been played with at all. And also the fact that closet technology (I use that term loosely) has come a long way. We have been dissatisfied with having one shelf and one bar, and felt the need to remedy the situation.

One of our favorite home stores is The Container Store. If you are a neat freak, organization freak, basket, bin, and doodad freak, or just any other sort of freak that likes putting stuff into other stuff, then this is your place. Admittedly, I am not an organized individual, as my wife, mother, and anybody else that has ever spent a few minutes with me can attest to. But that notwithstanding, I genuinely enjoy shopping there. It’s a lot like Ikea, you just start thinking of all the crap you would do if you had time, money, and motivation. Well, at this stage in my life, I have 2 and ½ of those.

At The Container Store they have a closet system called Elfa, which I believe is Swedish, further tying it to Ikea in my mind. It’s very similar to the systems found at other home improvement stores, but seems to be a much higher quality, and it is highly adjustable. A few months ago, they had a large sale on it, so we dropped a few hundred dollars to outfit several of our closets with the systems.

We were going to have it all shipped to the house, but it would have been a rather large sum of money to have that done. They offer an in-store pickup option, and that seemed to be the best solution. The closest store is in San Jose, about an hour away, at a really nice shopping center called Santana Row. We pulled up out front, went inside, and within about 5 minutes they brought a big cart full of stuff out and we loaded the car up. Very easy; very quick.

So the following weekend I set about installing the first closet full in the coat closet. We are also going to do the Master Bedroom, and the Laundry Room. We will be installing the laundry room while the kitchen is being done and the master closet when we get off our butts and do it. It was a relatively easy process, once the demo was done. Taking out closets that have been in place for 60 years, and have a dozen coats of paint wasn’t super easy, but with a pry-bar, hammer, and some scrap pieces of wood, it all came out pretty easily.

Some houses have drywall, some have plaster and lath. And we have plywood walls. And as you can see, when they built the house, they decided to plaster and paint after they put up the closet pieces. So we will need to go back in and put some plaster up to blend it in, and paint so there’s no exposed wood. And once we do, it will also get a thorough re-organization so as to not look nearly as messy as it does right now.

The hardware went up rather easily. A couple holes drilled and screws screwed in. The rails went on easily and then the shelves went on quickly too. We replaced a single shelf with 2 shelves, lowered the hanger bar by about 6 inches, and the whole shelving unit is about 6 inches from going all the way across. The CD/DVD rack on the door is an Elfa system we purchased a few months back, and matches the rest of the system. We will install a rack on the side of the closet to hold brooms and such, since we really don’t have a good spot to store them at the moment. So while we can hold a few less jackets, we have a lot more storage. All told, the demo and install took about 2 hours. And I did it by myself while Cara was out with friends. Go Me!!!!