Yes, it was ambitious. Yes, we planned on doing it over our holiday break. Yes, we have had the product for a long time and just kept talking about it…and talking about it…But we finally just woke up on Saturday and said, "Let's redo the closet today." So we did. Here is the before video:
We gutted the closet, spackled the holes from the previous shelves, sanded, primed and painted. THEN we were ready for the good part: putting up our new Rubbermaid Homefree closet system. Really the part that took the longest (aside from literally waiting for the paint to dry), was making sure we had getting the cross beam and uprights measured and secured in place (finding studs, measuring, making sure they are level, and drilling in the screws). Here are the "bones" as I was calling them – the crossbar and uprights before we put any shelves or accessories up. (The only thing we added from here were some extensions to make the uprights longer. You can see we have one up on Eric's side.)
An added bonus was that we went through all of our clothes/shoes/stuff in the closet along the way. Here is all of our clothes piled on the bed (Jax is looking quite comfy!):
We had a "donate" bin out and tossed things in it as we went. (We always have a donate bin somewhere in our house at all times, but we pretty much filled one up with stuff out of our closet alone.) A more thourough method is to have more choices for bins, like this video explains.
Once that was done, it was time to literally play around with the shelves and accessories to see what worked best. I couldn't decide where I wanted things – which was ok since this product is so flexible. If I didn't like something, I could move it. No tools needed at that point because everything secures into the uprights – shelves, brackets and all of the accessories. Eazy peazy! I finally made up my mind and am so happy with the result. Enjoy the after video (and please excuse the cat cameo!):
We started at noon on Saturday and finished at 10pm Sunday night. That included everything – even a few trips to Lowe's for some extra accessories and food breaks and the occassional zone-out for watching football. An ambitious weekend project in the books – and a fabulous, custom closet just for me!
That looks great! Good work–glad to see Jax and Jill found their way into the video as well.
I couldn’t keep those cats out of there – I guess they wanted to get in a cameo!