Pantry and Linen Closet upgrades

Several months ago, we decided that the kitchen pantry and the upstairs linen closets needed to be improved.  Both had shelving that only came partway to the front of the closet, so we were losing about a foot of shelving on each of the 4 shelves. 

Furthermore, because we have 9 foot ceilings in these closets, there was room for an additional partial shelf above the others. 

I had cut shelving to fit into these spaces quite a while back, and the wife had begun to paint them with primer, but she ran out of primer, and other (way larger) projects got started.  The shelves sat half-primered in the furnace room as we carpeted, framed and drywalled the basement.

This past week though, I finally put the half-finished shelves on saw-horses in the garage and set the garage heater on high, to get everything up to painting temperature.  Over two days, I painted the interior of the linen closet and pantry, completed priming and painting the shelves, and installed new footer boards for the top shelf in each closet.  The shelves fit in nicely with no further cutting, and are screwed down to the footer boards.

Each closet turned out pretty well, and I figure with the additional front-to-back area and extra shelf, it works out to gaining about extra 2 shelves per closet.   A good thing, because right now this house is very low on installed cabinetry.

Carpentry

Carpentry is probably not a word I would use to describe my efforts with wood.  My work is rough and imperfect.  I give myself passing grades though.  I'm not too much worse than people who do this for a living.

The basement has a bay-window shaped nook that sits directly below the breakfast nook.  When we had the big room in the basement drywalled, this nook became a storage area.  However it was a storage area without any shelves.  After doing the master closet rebuild I felt pretty competent to install shelving in this room. 

The job was far more complex than the master closet though.  This was mainly due to the angles involved and the need to cut several shelves to line up correctly to the wall, and also to each other.  I lucked out, and managed to get all six shelving pieces fit in correctly the first time.  Here are some pictures of the finished project.  There were no right angle cuts on these shelves!

Looking in:

 Bottom shelf, made from three pieces.

Looking up at the support brackets.

Not a carpenter, but not a complete loss either!

One final day in the closet

After complely removing all shelving and poles in the closet and then rebuilding it to suit us, the texturing and painting still remained.  My wife is always in charge of spackling and texture, while I am in charge of ...whatever she tells me to do... :)

Anyway, I bought a can of oil-based quick-drying wall texture.

Which immediately gave both of us massive headaches. You are supposed to use it in a well-ventilated area, which the closet is not. A fan just distributed the skanky odor outside the closet into the bathroom and master bedroom. Some contents of this can: Mixed Xylenes, Toluene, Acetone, Isobutane, Ethylbenzene, and propane propellant. That's just the hydrocarbons that turn to vapor, not the texture itself! If you decide to use this product, get the slow drying formula instead! Save a few brain cells for cerveza to kill.

On the bright side, since the stuff dried so quickly, by the time we poured the paint and spread the drop cloth, we could start painting.  And so we painted.  It turned out really nice.  Check it out!

Two days in the master closet...

No, I am not in trouble with the wife.  In fact I may have scored a few points!

When we left California, we loaded up our 5th wheel trailer pretty much to the roof, and used it as a moving van.  Most of the stuff in there wasn't everyday stuff, and a lot of it was clothing that we could no longer fit into.

We dug through the 5th wheel to try and locate some drapes that I wanted to put up in the office.  We never did find the drapes... However we realized that a lot of the clothes in the RV now fit again, because  we have each lost about 35 lbs since going low-carb back in October.

Which brings me to the master closet.  It's a room about 12ft x 8ft, with a 9ft ceiling.  Each side had a single pole for hanging clothes, and a shelf with about 3ft of wasted space above it.  We decided to reorganize the closet because there was room for two poles per side.  It would also allow us to empty the clothes out the RV, and maybe use both the clothes and the RV for the first time since leaving California.

Here is my side of the closet.  The white line is the elevation of the footer board that supported the original shelf and clothes rack.  Since the footer board was caulked to the drywall, I pulled a fair amount of drywall off when I tore it loose.

Here is my side of the closet with the lower shelf and pole installed.  My wife spackled a few holes in the wall as well.

Here is my side of the closet, completed, and loaded with clothes from both sides of the closet. At this point we were preparing to demo the other side.

Before photo: My wife's side, looking toward the door. This side was slightly more complicated because we needed to split it out, leaving one tall section for longer clothing like dresses.

Before photo: My wife's side again, this time looking through the door into the closet.

After Photo: My wife's side looking toward the door.

After photo: My wife's side looking through the door.

I am very happy with how it all turned out. We doubled the clothes hanging area of the master closet for about $100. Most of the cost was particle board and hangers, and I had the guy at Home Depot make 90% of the cuts. That saved me a ton of trips across snow out to the shop where my table saw is located.  The handful of cuts I had to make, I did with a small Skil Saw.

We still need to texture the walls and then paint. If you look closely in the last photo, you can see the red can of spray texture on the lower shelf. Next time I am off shift, we will be finished with that project!

The follow-up post where we texture and paint the closet is here

Texture and Paint

As I type this, our handyman should be two-coating the big room in the basement, and finishing the majority of the project.  Here he is on Friday night, finishing up the texture.

There will be a few things remaining to do, such as texture and paint the closet, install the closet door, and have the electrical outlets connected.  Also the crawl-space area is not finished.  But the month-long project is nearing completion finally! 

Just in time for family to arrive at Thanksgiving!  We now have to quickly move a bunch of storage boxes from the guest bedroom, back into this storage room.  And clean house.  Ugh.