Our Closet Makeover

May 21, 2014 Courtney Foster Shearer

So, we sorta kinda accidentally updated our closet. Yes, you read that right and no I'm not necessarily the luckiest person in the world, but I'm pretty close ;)

Ok, so how does one go about accidently updating their closet? Good question...

Let me start from the beginning....Our house actually came with a pretty great master closet set-up. If you've ever been in a 1940's bungalow you know that storage space is not one of their strong suites. In fact, typically the closets are so painfully small that most girls would break into a panic attack upon laying eyes on them. However, Brent and I really lucked out because the previous owners added an entire second level to our home, adding a full master suite complete with a walk-in closet.

JACKPOT

We were all smitten and grateful for our closet for close to a year, but then a certain oka.B photo shoot took place at our house and we had to remove a lot of the clothes from the closet for this shot:

Photo by Peter Ho Studio.

You know how it goes, once you tear something apart it's real tough to just throw it back together without taking a moment to re-evaluate. So, with our closet partially dismantled we decided to edit our clothing and consider some issues we had observed over the past year, namely a couple of sagging rods.

This little dilemma just wouldn't do, you see - We I gots lots of clothes... and we didn't really see that changing anytime soon. We decided to capitalize on the half empty closet and remedy this issue before a rod snapped and the entire closet went to shambles. First things first, we had to empty out the rest of the clothes....

All the shoes too....

With our closet emptied out it was time to get crackin' on some new rods. As we considered our options, we knew we wanted to use a material that would be very strong, so the sagging wouldn't become an issue in the future. We knew metal would be stronger than wood and coming fresh off our DIY Console Table project where we used plumbing pipes, we decided the same material would be a cool concept for our closet rods as well.

There are rods in 5 different areas of the closet, so we took some measurements to determine the length of each space. Just like with the console table we had the guys at Home Depot cut and thread the pipes to our desired lengths.

We assembled the rods, joints and flanges to form T's for the top of the closet and one cross piece at the bottom.

Once assembled, Brent spray painted all of the pieces black so everything would be uniform.

Installation was pretty simple. To begin Brent measured to ensure the clearances were appropriate for the hangers. Next he made sure each rod was level and then simply screwed the flanges to the wall.

Everything fit together seamlessly and I really love the unexpected industrial vibe the plumbing parts create.

Plumbing parts in a closet...random yes, but oh so effective! This concept was relatively inexpensive and totally customizable, not to mention these pipes could hold up a dangling linebacker. It was just the solution we needed and we really like how it turned out. In fact we liked it so much our little brains kept ticking away and before we knew it we had come up with another random, possibly genius idea, that we went for. Unfortunately for now I'm going to have to leave you with a big fat dot dot dot here:

. . .

(I'm feeling literal today)

Adding it to this post would make for one ginormous post and I just don't feel like getting carpal tunnel this early in life, so I'm going to be sharing part 2 with you next week. You know the drill, stay tuned!

Unless otherwise noted all photos are my own.