New Closet

I am so excited.  I asked my Uncle David to help me make the closet shelves I'd been thinking about for a couple of years.  Back then I had my old dangerous stairs ripped out and replaced with new modern stairs.  It had to be done since I'd fallen down the old stairs several times.

I sold most of the parts of the old stairs on craigslist but I kept the treads from the old stairs with an eye toward using them as shelves in my closet.  Now that I'm retired I'm trying to complete all these projects that have been on my todo list for a while.  The deck, done.  The cupboards in the basement, done.  Take the carpeting out of the guest room, done.  The closet shelves were the last project.   

The shelves were going to supported by plumbing pipe.  I'd been pinning them for a long time and I used powerpoint to draw up the plans.

So now I had a plan and I was on the hunt for the piping I needed at a reasonable price.  I checked out Lowes but they couldn't cut the pipe and thread it shorter than about 18" or 20" so they were out.  I then went to a local plumbing supply shop but their prices were a little high for cutting some of the custom lengths I needed so I found Essential Hardware and ordered the galvanized pipe I needed.  They had all the lengths required and their price was very reasonable.  I got enough hardware to do two 6 shelf units for about $145.  

I was planning to paint the pipes myself but my uncle is not nearly the procrastinator I am and he was ready to go so he did the pipe clean-up which entailed soaking them in some kind of cleaner to get the oil off them.  Then he spray painted them with a hammered black paint I got from Walmart.  They looked great.  

So now it was my turn.  I had to clear out the closet and paint the walls before he put up the shelf.  The clear out was a herculean task.  I've lived in this house for 10 years and I've never cleared out this closet.  Not good.  I found stuff I'd forgotten I owned, hence the reason for the new shelves. 

So once all the stuff was dumped in my bedroom, I painted the closet this pretty shade called Skater's Pond from Home Depot.  It is sort of a very light silver, gray.   I love starting with a clean slate.

I finished painting at about 9 p.m. and my uncle showed up at 10 a.m. the next day to install the shelving he built.  Nothing like waiting till the last minute.  

David was so prepared he had the new shelves installed in about 1 hour because he brought everything he needed.  So unlike his niece.  When I do projects like this I usually have to make several trips to the hardware store.  Turns out my measurements were a little off so we ended up with 5 shelves rather than 6.  I think the error occurred in my measurements of the t-bracket and the fitting on the pipe.  

I'm thrilled with the way they turned out.  Just the way I had envisioned them and they were so easy.  Of course, I'm saying that but my uncle did all the work.   He said the worst part was planing the old steps.  I didn't mind at all that they had some marks on them.  It gives them character plus most of the shelves would be covered with clothes.  Here is the restocked closet with much less stuff than it started with.  So happy!!!

The other up side is that Christian Associates is going to get tons of clothes.