Making Small Spaces Work

In typical homes the age of ours, the square footage is often maximized in bedrooms and living space in exchange for small closets and bathrooms, so one of the sacrifices I knew I was going to have to make when choosing our house was the serious lack of bathroom and closet space it has compared to more modern houses. And although I'll never have a luxurious walk-in closet in this house, I wanted to improve the design of our master closet in order to maximize the storage space it can offer.

The closet is actually a pretty decent size considering the age of the home, and I knew it had potential to be able to store a good amount of clothes, even as a reach-in closet. It was originally set up as one rod and shelf straight across with some random shelves on either side. The shelves and rods were really flimsy and poorly constructed, not to mention they were not efficient in maximizing storage space. 

So I did some research and came up with a design that I thought would maximize space and work best for what we needed out of a closet. I decided that rod space was my biggest priority since we have a large dresser and chest that offer plenty of storage for folded items, and I was able to come up with a design that has the total rod space actually equal to the amount of rod space that we have right now in our huge walk-in closet in Charleston! I also included a small amount of built-in shelves to the design to give us a place for bulky sweaters/sweatshirts that don't fit in drawers easily. 

I maximized the rod space by using stacked rods. The only disadvantage to this was that the clothes on the bottom rack would hang almost to the floor leaving no floor space for shoes, so I decided to utilize the side walls for shoe storage. The design also includes a few inches of full-length rod space on the very end for long dresses, etc. 

When Dad knocked out the old shelving we were surprised with some more vintage wallpaper!

The empty closet:

 First divider up!

(Sorry I don't have more pictures along the way. Although he's GREAT at construction, Dad is not so great at documenting his projects for the blog while I'm not around.)

And the painted finish!

(Ignore all the tape marking touch-up spots.)

I love my new closet and I am so thankful for all my Dad's hard work in making it happen! This type of closet makeover using one of the manufactured closet systems like IKEA would have cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. We are so thankful for Handy Randy!!!