Luckily I had saved an over the door shoe rack that I used when I first bought the condo. This stored at least some of my shoes. But I had shoes thrown all throughout the closet too. I love the little detail of the sloped roof, but this did make it more difficult to design. Lucky for me, I'm so short, it's much more useable space for me than someone tall.
The bar on the right was only functional for half of the bar, because they hung another bar right next to it. The layout was a little odd before.
One of my friends was over one Saturday night, and kept saying how great the size of the closet was. The next day, I just got obsessed with the fact that I had to redo it immediately. So I started researching (aka Pinteresting) to figure out what I wanted to do. As I started looking, I decided I wanted to use the Ikea Billy bookcases as shelving. I measured, remeasured, drew diagrams with different options. Then I kept looking at the floor. I didn't want to lay the bookshelves on top of the carpet, because then I was afraid we'd have to cut the carpet out when I redid the floors, and that it would look really unprofessional. I remembered that I had pinned this blog about painted sub floors:
I loved the stenciling, I loved the gray. But then I realized if I wanted to paint the closet walls gray, that would be too much gray. I also knew that I wouldn't keep the subfloors as the floor forever, so stenciling would be a lot of additional work. So, I decided on a dark brown. I had planned on using Rustoleum's Kona Brown, but Home Depot was out of that color. So the great paint master mixer
recommended just selecting a dark brown color and we'd mix a quart of Behr for it. So that's what we went ahead and did. I had a buddy shopping with me that night- our class mascot Skippyjon Jones was visiting my house for the Thanksgiving break, so he came along.
When I got home, I removed all the stuff from the closet. This was the part I wasn't prepared for. It took up two whole rooms.
Then I went to town with the crowbar and hammer on the closet. There were so many random pieces and and nails/screws. First the rods came down. Then the shelves. Then the baseboards- I did these carefully so that I could reuse them if wanted. I found lots of drywall anchors that hadn't opened, so I pulled them all out so that I could fill those holes. Once everything was out, I couldn't wait to get the carpet out- I hadn't even noticed how nasty is was until everything was out!
Also, do you like how this hole was patched? I think it may have been medical/athletic tape! Haha.
Then the magic started to happen... I was so excited to see what the subfloor looked like under the carpet. I started pulling up from the corner. I recommend wearing a good pair of tennis shoes if you ever decide to do this yourself- lots of tacks and staples that you don't want to step on, I tend to wear flip flops regardless of what project I'm working on.
And then, all the carpet was up! Took forever to remove all the little tacks and staples, but as soon as I saw sub floor, I was so excited. I could see that this was going to be so much better. I would've even preferred the subfloors as is over those carpets. I had to leave the house soon after because I was sneezing so much. I had bought a mask and goggles to collect leaves, so I decided to put those on as I started sanding the subfloor. Look at that mask- so gross when I was done! You can even see how much dust it produces in the bedroom and bath. I must have had to keep the windows open for a week!
I painted the walls before the final sanding, in case I dripped any on the floor. After two passes with the sander, I vacuumed up the dust and painted the first brown coat. I kind of liked the imperfections of the one coat. At this point, it was nearly 3am and decided to head to bed, This was how it was looking.
You can read all about day two of this project in Part 2. I know that you'll be waiting in suspense!
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