Closet construction: Planning Phase

We’re finally getting down to the heavy planning on our closet system. It was surprisingly stressful! 

We had the general structure and idea of what we wanted figured out, we just had to do a lot of measuring and remeasuring. Deeeeeefinitely doesn’t help that one side of our wall is a whole inch higher than the other side. These uneven ceilings are going to kill me.

Essentially, we will have the four vertical boards as the basis for the structure. One of the hardest parts of this entire project has been trying to figure out how to attach those boards to the wall. After watching some videos, we decided to make a sort of anchor, by attaching a trim-sized piece of wood to the wall on the insides of the vertical boards, and then screwing the boards into the anchors from the opposite side. The vertical pieces and the top-most shelf will all be 3/4” thick, but all of the other shelves will only be 1/2”, so in order to prevent bowing we will have a similar anchor piece (called a “cleat”, I believe) beneath the back of every shelf as well, securing it to the wall.

After knocking out that problem, the rest was mostly design and measurements. We wanted a few inches beneath the unit for storing duffel bags and such, and a shelf above each hanging bar mostly for design purposes. Not pictured in this plan—because we still haven’t figured out the logistics—are two very shallow drawers in the center console. We’re talking 4-5 inches deep, max. This will be mostly for accessories, like Dallin’s watches, sunglasses, jewelry, tie bars, etc. I’m hoping to come up with some neat drawer divider ideas soon.  

Now that we have the idea of how to start building the darn thing, we’re going to get started soon. Our poor broken clothing racks are leaning against a wall in our room and need to be vacated ASAP. Step one will be purchasing all our wood and supplies, step two is staining and finishing, and any cutting and trimming. After that we should be all set to get things started.

If any of you reading this have any prior experience, we’re sort of just flying by the seat of our pants here. Dallin likes building things and we both seem to have a head for analytical thinking, so hopefully this all goes smoothly! More to come soon.