Last week I said I’d show you our closet project when it was done, and we (Nik, really) finally finished it up this weekend. The catastrophe that sparked this project was when one side of the shelving in our master bedroom closet fell off the walls:
As disastrous as it was, it made us realize that our closet is so much more functional with extra space on one side. Plus, my problem of piling half worn clothes on the floor outside of the closet has gotten worse and worse (like when you wear something that you can get away with wearing again before washing…exercise clothes, lounge-around-the-house clothes, etc…don’t judge me). So I needed a place to easily hang things (I know, it’s not hard to just put them on a hanger, but this is apparently beyond me).
We had some scrap pallet wood from when our flooring shipment came in. I checked the code printed on the pallet to make sure the wood wasn’t harmful. Some pallet wood contains bad chemicals like fungicides, so you can always look at the code printed on the wood and figure out what is in yours. You can see ours says HT (for heat treated, harmless), CN (from China, and the numbers refer to the particular warehouse in China), and DB (de-barked, also harmless). So, we were good to go!
I pried a few pieces off and sanded them down a bit, then Nik came in and cut pieces with the miter saw so we could create three 4′ long rows.
Then we tried out pretty much every stain color we had to see what we liked best. We ended up choosing classic gray. So we stained the pieces, and then I gave them 3 good coats of water-based poly, with a sanding between the 2nd and 3rd coats. I wanted them smooth so as not to snag my clothes.
Next, we had to figure out how to mount them to a wall, and attaching a couple pieces of backboard wood directly to the studs seemed to be the best option. And Nik got to use his fancy new stud finder that I just got him.
Next, we debated for approximately 2 hours about where we wanted to put screws into the stained pallet boards, since there were already some natural holes there, so did we want to use those, or did we like the natural holes showing and we should just make new screw holes…yes, these are the types of questions that some PhD scientists think about at night. We decided on new holes for the screws. This was the planned layout, with hooks:
And here’s the final product, installed in the closet:
We still need to fill the holes in the drywall from when the previous shelving ripped out…but all in all, I think it’s sleek and very functional. Sadly, I don’t think I’ll be seeing much of it since I already have clothes heaped on all of the hangers =)
The cost of this project was about $20 or $25 for the 4 hangers, everything else (Screws, stain, poly, sandpaper, brushes) we already had on hand. We could’ve bought pre-made wall mount hangers at the store for about the same price and weeks less work (we didn’t actually work on it for weeks…but from start to finish we did procrastinate on finishing up this project for about a month). But I think making our own was more fun!