Adventures in Restoration: The Girls' Bedroom, Part II

To compensate for the lack of a closet in the girls' bedroom, we thought about just buying an armoire for their clothes. But we knew having more storage would be extremely useful--storage not just for clothes, but for family games, puzzles, blankets, shoes, and Elyse's "special stuff." The room was big enough that we decided to build in a closet. I mean, can you ever really have too much storage? We measured, looked at plans, checked out ideas at Lowe's, thought about the pros and cons of different types of closets, but ultimately decided on a medium sized walk-in. We wanted it big enough for clothes on one side and floor-to-ceiling shelving on the other. Here are a few pictures of my dad and Josh framing it out.

 

 

 

Then my dad put sheetrock up. Sheetrock doesn't exactly scream "1912" but it'll do for a closet. 

 

In trying to decide how we wanted to outfit the inside, we priced things out and decided to just design and build our own shelving. We measured all the things that we wanted to put into the closet and figured out how long to make and how high to place the clothes rods, giving extra room for when the girls are older. I don't have any good pics of the inside but I did find these that will give you a pretty good idea, plus a little sneak peek of the finished product in the rest of the room.

 

Here's the games and puzzles side.

 

From this view, you can kind of see the clothes side. We placed a low clothes rod with a higher rod above it closest to the doorway, then 12" shelving down the middle, then a clothes rod placed half-way up for dresses and longer clothes. There will eventually be trim surrounding the doorway matching every other door in the house, but we haven't gotten a chance to stain it yet. We also decided to not put a door on the closet for easier access (and since Elyse usually keeps everything very neat!). We are super-pleased with the outcome, and it stores loads of stuff!

In the next Adventures in Restoration post, I will show you the finished product of the girls' room, complete with paint, trim, baseboards and carpet.