After moving in to our new house this past fall, I immediately made a list of “Home Improvements”. Nothing that *needed* to be done. Just little things I’d like to do to make this house *work* for us.
On that list was our back entry. We don’t actually use it as an entry, but it consists of a door leading outside, tile floor, and a decent sized coat/storage closet. While unpacking we stuffed a few coats in there, some extra shoes, the vacuum, and an assortment of Thirty-One bags and market baskets. Despite its ample storage space, the closet was rendered useless because the doors were large and awkward for the kids to open (and never close). And most of the time stuff just gone thrown in the bottom, never to be hung or organized.
I had grand dreams of creating this wall of hooks, with shoe storage underneath a small bench. But the big thing was that the wall of hooks would actually be secret doors that opened up to shelves of storage behind them. Storage for what? I don’t know. It just sounded really cool! I imagined it would look something similar to this:
But then I got antsy one weekend (I blame the tremendous amounts of snow and cabin fever) and decided to somewhat ditch those plans and go a different route. A route that would still give us the wall of hooks in the back entry but would also give me a whole lot more space in our bedroom closet!
See, our master bedroom closet and the back entry coat closet were back to back with each other. Merely separated by a wall. And the idea of having a larger master closet, thus making our small room feel a little bit bigger made me grab a hammer and start tearing apart drywall!
bedroom closet ~ cleaned out & organizers removed
hallway closet ~ doors removed & cleaned out
Once we removed the closet systems, drywall, insulation, and 2x4s; relocated the coats and cleaning supplies to the basement; and came up with our plan! We would build a wall where the coat closet door was recessed in a bit and that would serve as our coat hook wall in the hallway and the back wall of our new master closet. After tossing around ideas of beadboard and rebuilding an insulated wall, we settled on the easiest solution that would still be sturdy enough to hold everything it needed to hold and would still look good — tongue & groove horizontal pine!
wall going up, literally
So super easy to put together! It literally took us less than a day to tear down the wall, buy all the supplies and build the wall. Oh, and reapply our bedroom closet organizer and put everything back in the closet. Phew!
bedroom closet ~ wall complete, just need to add organizer and stuff
new hallway “wall”, almost finished
Then it was on to a week of painting. I wanted the hallway hook area to be an off-white to set it apart from the rest of the wood interior in our house. After the paint was finished, we added two rows of black matte hooks.
always remember to measure twice
hallway “wall” finished!
I would have loved to add a bench and some little shoe cubbies but recessing it any further back would have taken too much away from the master closet and bumping the bench out in to the hallway would have messed with the door. So, shoes and boots just continue to be lined up along the wall or door, wherever they land.
The master closet is still a work in progress. We’ve added hooks in our new wall space for belts and scarves and hats but we’re still debating on some different ideas for that space, including a laundry chute.
All in all, I’m glad we went with the wall of hooks and not the hidden shelves. Although, those would still be really cool!
Goodbye, closet. Hello, closet! is a post from: Stacey says...
Keep connected...
Tweet me @StaceyHeneveld | Let's Chat on Facebook | I'm Pinteresting