Master Bedroom Closet DIY Built-In Transformation

My master bedroom closet has undergone the most transformation of any room in our whole house since we moved in nearly eight years ago. It was the one space that had me scratching my head the most. You see, my husband and I both have our own walk-in closets and it's delightful. My husband's closet is in our bedroom and mine is off of our master bathroom. It's long and spacious and bigger than some New York City apartments. But it had these cheap wire rack shelves that made the space nearly unusable. I knew it had potential, and slowly I've been tweaking it so that it can live up to its potential. Why not take a look with me and check out my master bedroom closets transformation. If you have any desire to put in built-ins, this will help answer some of your questions.

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DIY Master Bedroom Closet Built-In Closet Organization

Back in May, we started the long process of putting built in shelving and drawers into my master closet.

Yes, that's right, MY  master closet. My husband has his very own {much smaller} closet.

We got several bids from local companies but ultimately settled on ordering custom shelving from a company called Easy Closets.

After revealing the built in's in June, I spent the next few weeks slowly moving things in and getting settled into my new closet.

I'm still so in love with my closet and have to pinch myself nearly every day when I walk in! It's probably been my favorite home improvement project ever.

I'm happy to give you a little tour inside.

On the left, I have endless shoe shelves.

You can see how I made custom boot shapers out of pool noodles here.

I have 27 {!} drawers and endless cubbies!

I found a few boxes from Ikea to help hide some of the clutter. Snow pants and coats are in the rectangular boxes on the top shelf, books and craft supplies are in the boxes below and my jeans and sweaters are folded on the shelves.

On the other side of the closet, I have open rod shelving. We ordered a valet pole and a belt hanger.

I didn't think that I would like the valet pole as much as I do.

I was wrong.  My husband was right.

I'm glad he ordered it!

I changed all of my hangers to black velvet and because I have a limited amount of hangers

I have been really good about getting rid of anything that I don't love to make room for those things that I do love.

At the back of my closet, I still have my sewing area. It's such a beautiful space to work.

I'm not a super organized person. I am actually quite surprised that my closet has stayed as orderly as it has.
I would highly recommend Easy Closets {and no, I was not compensated by them, though I wish I had been!}
Thanks for coming along on a tour of my master closet.

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DIY Custom Master Bedroom Closet Organization

I can't start this post about all the hard work that my husband put into my master closet, without mentioning that today is our 15th wedding anniversary!

Where has the time gone?!

Seriously.

It seems like someone who has been married for 15 years is so much older than we are.

Like 15 years is a lifetime.

It's probably a record or something.

Well, probably not, but it is a record for us!

I am very thankful to be married to such a hardworking man who is a fantastic father to our children and a wonderful life partner.  If you want to read more about the Story of us, click here.

Now on to the big master closet reveal!

After about 45 hours of time spent constructing, hanging, and assembling, the closet is officially finished!

We used a DIY custom closet organization called Easy Closets and I'd recommend them.

Mike worked really hard to try to get this all done for me in a weekend.

Because of the initial stall, it took two weekends.

Now if I had time to sit back and organize it, we would be all set!

It's just too pretty for me to mess it up with my stuff just yet.

This is the left side of my closet.

It looks like the right but I am taking this picture from my craft area.

The door at the end is the bathroom door.

Not pictured is the row of cubbies on the far right.

It's a tight space and hard to get a good picture in.

This is the right side of the closet, though it looks like the left side.

This is mostly hanging rods, though it also has several cool built-in features as well.

 Like this belt and scarf rack.

And this valet pole.

I saw absolutely no need for it, but my husband placed the order and thought that it sounded like fun.

Heck, what's an extra $40 in the grand scheme of things?

Under several drawers, I have a built-in laundry basket.

The wire basket is removable, so I can take it down the hall when I need to do laundry.

I also have a velvet lined jewelry tray in one of my drawers.

I don't have any jewelry that is nice enough to put in the drawers, but one can dream can't she?

Just another angle, this time from the bathroom door.

Isn't it fabulous?!

I love it!

A few things we learned in the process of using Easy Closets DIY custom closet organization: 1. Don't be afraid to make changes. Drilling new holes for the rods makes a huge difference in the footprint of the room. 2. Measurements are important. The vertical shelves were sent to us drilled wrong by 1/8 of an inch. It stopped the whole process. Also, if we had made the unit behind the door an inch longer, the drawers wouldn't pull out into the door. Not catastrophic, but annoying to know that we could have prevented that problem. 3. It takes a lot of trips to the recycling facility to get rid of 45 boxes!
I could not be happier with the results.I'm pretty impressed with Easy Closets and glad we used them for my long-awaited built-ins.
I know my husband worked hard {happy anniversary!} to install this for me and I am forever appreciative!
Now, which drawer should the undies go in?

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Master closet built in progress

If you have been following along with my blog, you will know that my master closet built in's have been something I have wanted to do for two years.

We finally started the process of getting bids a few months ago, and after being blown away with the pricing to have it done we settled on a company called Easy Closets and took the DIY approach.

We designed the closets on line, spoke with a design rep, ordered the closets, demo'd my old closet, started construction on the built ins, and then came to a screeching halt when the custom holes in the vertical support shelves were drilled wrong.

After waiting four days for a new shipment, the project resumed.

These are the correct vertical shelves, and we will pick up where we left off last time.

Shelves were put in according to the design.

This first section is my shoe shelf.

There is room for a lot of shoes!

A picture of the shelving all in place on the left side of the closet.

A picture of the right side of my closet.

See that drawer at the bottom?

It's a built in laundry basket.

Base molding was put up and

that was the stopping point for the evening.

Things are starting to come together.

The next morning brought the construction of all 21 drawers.

My husband estimated that each one took him about 10 minutes to assemble.

Multiply that by 21 and you have a big math problem that I don't want to do without a calculator!

 There are drawers of all sizes that ended up lining the walls of my bedroom.

After the drawers were assembled, the crown molding was hung.

Now it's really starting to look like a closet!

I sort of have a crush on crown molding.

On the right side, my closet meets up with a window, not a wall like on the other side.

My ever cautious husband decided to put a wall mount in on this side so that the closet is more secure.

See those two screws?

That's the mount.

He attached the bracket to the wall, and now we can all sleep at night.

The installation of the drawer slides came next.

There are lots of drawers, so there are lots of slides.

This is the first bank of drawers going in on the left side.

The rods came next.

The right side of the closet is mostly hanging rod shelving.

The way that the design is set up, for ease of use, the rod hanging hardware fits in to the holes of the vertical shelving.  However, this means that the hangers that go on the rods end up sticking out a fair amount. 

We can't have that, so my handy husband decided to rehang the rods further in to the shelving so they stick out less.  He measured how far in he wanted them,

drilled the holes

taped it up???

O.k., I'll be honest, I have no idea what step this is.

I wasn't around.  I heard about it, but I didn't do it.

I'm sure it's important though.

And now the rods hang in the shelving a few inches further which makes the hangers stick out less in the closet. 

I am not tall enough to reach the top rods, which is why these are hung down so low.

Because of that, we have decided to put a shelf up above these two rods.

The final step is caulking the crown and base molding.

And then painting.

Check back with me on Thursday so see the big reveal!

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Master Bedroom Closet DIY Built In's with Easy Closets

If you have been following along with my blog for any length of time, you would know that my master closet built ins has been a two year long dream come true.

I had several bids for built ins from local companies, but none could compete with the price that we got from Easy closets.  Once we settled on a design, we ordered the closets and one week later, 39 boxes and nearly 1400 pounds of closet awesomeness appeared.

The UPS guy might argue with the appearing part, but here they are.

Labeled and stacked.  There is even a box that says open first.

Well thought out?

You bet.

Because the built-ins are floor to ceiling our existing molding needed to be removed.

Measurements were made and lines were drawn so that the rail could hold up the shelving.

 Here are the rails hung on both sides.

The vertical boards came next.

Here is the long line of all of the vertical boards all in place.

Because my husband is adding crown molding to the top, he placed these backer boards to fill the gap.

This is what those boards look like up close.

This is where the whole project came to a screeching halt. See all of those holes?
They were drilled wrong in every single one of those vertical boards. The boards holes are off by about 1/8- 1/2 inch which makes a difference because the drawers and shelves don't sit flush.  Everything looks wonky.
This realization occurred on a Saturday, about a half an hour after the East Coast customer service took a break for the weekend.  Ugh!
While a whole weekend was set aside to specifically work on the closet, a whole weekend ended up getting wasted since work couldn't occur.
At 5 am our time on Monday morning, my husband put a call into customer service.
Three messages and three hours later, he finally had his call returned, and the customer service rep agreed that the best solution was to recut the boards {by someone who wasn't drunk-my words, not his}, and mail them out a three-day priority.
I hate when something isn't right with a custom order that you place, good customer service usually makes up for it.  While the delay in response and the difficulty at reaching someone at Easy Closets was frustrating, they rectified the situation at a huge expense to them {the shipping alone is probably setting them back $400}.
I'm not quite sure if Easy Closets would benefit from a little quality control before shipping. It would probably save them some money.
For now, the closet project is on hold until the end of the week, when new product arrives. Hopefully, with the holes drilled in all the right spots!

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