How I Built My Dream Closet

 If you followed my other blog you probably weren't keeping count but in a space of 4 years, I moved seven times. As a result, I kept packing up my clothes, then as each new season rolled around and I couldn't find suitable clothing to wear, I would hit the thrift stores and stock up. Well twelve seasons later and I now have the equivalent of a small store worth of clothes. What to do with them all, where to put them??

The house has two smallish bedrooms upstairs, one at each end of a long windowless space that is 40 feet long by about 16 feet wide with sloping ceilings. Neither bedroom has any storage whatsoever, no closets, shelves etc. I decided to build a walk-in closet in one third of my attic space.I really had to think about how I was going to do this as the ceiling is not high (six feet) and I wanted to leave a walkway down the center for ventilation and access to the (future) bathroom.

Here is the before of my attic cave. I cleared away the front third of this room

Standing in the room and looking to the right wall

 Standing in the room and looking back at the wall with the entrance. The shelf unit was a freebie from Craigsist.

There were about 10,000 staples in the wood which I spent a day removing and then used a metal scraper to smooth over any bits of wood that were loose or protruding. I can't afford fancy wall coverings so am just going to paint the OSB panels.

Two coats of primer and one coat of paint later and it's definitely looking brighter in here now.

Beside the shelves is a hanger for my belts. On the left wall is my shelf for hanging short clothes. I got the white wire shelves for free on CL and bought ceiling hooks and chain to suspend them from the ceiling.

Another short shelf for jackets was suspended at a 90 degree angle from that one. I bought the chain as one long length and had Dave use a zip cut disc on an angle grinder to cut the chain where necessary.( I'm a scaredy cat when it comes to sparks, so let him do that job!)

Another long shelf was added to hang all my long clothes

And here is the after... ( bear in mind, I'm not finished, eventually there will be a wall behind the dresser and the rest of the attic will get painted as I shuffle my boxes of stuff around)

This is the view from the entrance. The white dresser was a $25 CL find and has a full length mirror. The drawers hold my underwear, bras and socks. I have added a wicker seat to sit and put on shoes. The shoes are all on shelves to the left.

In between the shoe shelves, I have hung a small shelf with hooks to hang all my purses.

Behind the seat is the hallway that continues through the attic, on the other side of that is all the hanging clothes. The rack in front has hooks on the left with scarves on it and long dresses on one side. The backside is fancier dresses and seasonal things like scuba suit, ski suit

Sorry for the blurry picture( don't have lighting installed up here yet...probably have to go with inset pot lights as there is no headroom for a hanging fixture) This is a look at the backside of the long clothes on the left, coat rack in front and the short rack on the right.

The shelf is fully loaded with all my pants, sweaters and tops.

It looks amazing in person, the pictures don't really do it justice. There is ample room to walk around everything. It looks like a small store. I am LOVING it!! It is so awesome to walk in and easily see everything in a glance. Picking out an outfit and getting dressed is a snap now.

Stayed tuned for the continuation of these Reno's. I will be building a linen closet behind the right side of this closet and a bathroom behind that with another smaller walk-in closet behind that. The left side of the attic behind the dresser will be a large storage area and a flight of stairs to finish things off. Just waiting  for the last gasp of winter to pass us by, it's supposed to go to minus 16 tonight , brrr.

Do you love your closet? Have you come up with some good storage solutions, if so please share!

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