One Room Challenge Week 3 : Building Closet Shelves

We’re at the halfway point of the One Room Challenge, which means I have only three weeks left to finish up our bathroom makeover. In case you missed it, in Week One I talked about what the plan is and in Week Two we removed the glass shower door from our tub. This week we tackled a big job that we’d been mulling over for a long time – our bathroom closet.

This is what it looked liked before. The closet was set up as open shelving when we moved in and we’d kept it that way. The only changes we’d made was hanging some hooks for towels and adding an old dresser in there that I’d painted white years ago. In our old farmhouse there is very little storage space, so it seemed like a real waste of a good closet to have essentially half of it empty. It’s actually the largest closet in the whole house and yet it has been holding the least.

The first step was to figure out what we wanted to keep and what would be scrapped. I took down the metal closet rod (it was just a few screws) and took everything out. Our bathroom and hallway are the catch all right now, so you can just imagine how messy it is up there right now, ha! We realized that we liked not only the depth of the closet but also the way the shelves were put together.

Garrett put his high school wood working skills to good use and copied the shelves over to the other side of the closet. We decided to make them a little wider, leaving just enough room for the white dresser to fit back in. The shelves themselves are 1×10 boards with a second smaller piece (approx 5″) behind them and the supports on the walls are 1×2 strips.

Garrett went around and caulked all the seams fo the new shelves and the old shelves. After that, everything got a quick coat of primer.

Even the old shelves needed some caulking and fresh paint, so we decided to do everything.

I ended up going with Behr Paint Marquee in Intercoastal Grey for a moody blue-grey tone. It only took one full coat with minor touchups for a second coat later on.

Right away it looked like a proper built in closet unit and I love the muted tone of the paint.

I love it so much in fact that I ended up straying from the plans again and painting the bathroom vanity in the same blue too. I think it will really complement the wallpaper when we get it up (hopefully this week!)

I’m resisting the urge to organize the shelves just yet and give the paint a chance to properly cure. The next big decision was to go with curtains, barn doors or bifold doors for the closet, to let us close things up when we have company coming or want it to look tidier.

After weighing out all the options, we decided to go with bifold doors like the ones we installed in the master bedroom renovation. The only issue we have is that the doorway is taller on the right side, as the floor sags in that area. We’ve built it up with a small piece of wood that I’ll need to stain to blend in better. The doors came pre-primed so I’ll just need to give them a fresh coat of paint.

When they’re closed the room feels clean and bright. When we do keep them open, it’ll hopefully feel like it’s still a continuation of the room, rather than just a regular ol’ closet.

And you better believe that I’ve already been to the dollar store to look for cute new baskets to dress up the closet!

Be sure to stop by every week for the next six weeks to get an update on the progress. Check out the One Room Challenge blog to see all the other participants as well.

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE – FARMHOUSE BATHROOM