Friday, another windy day here in Minnesota.  Another day to dig the car out of the snow.   Luckily, we have some great neighbors that came and helped clear out our massive driveway.   Might as well stay in the house and keep working on indoor stuff.

First I would like to say, this entire closet shelving system cost us about $75!

This WAS a big empty and wasted space.  This closet is in our basement family room (aka Hubby’s Den) and we kept piling boxes and bins in there.  Well, if it wasn’t hard enough to get something from the very bottom bin (nor would you want to) the bins and boxes started cracking under pressure.  Not good.  I knew (hubby didn’t) that I wanted nothing but shelves.  We have another large closet in another room with hanging room for coats and such.  Shelves would allow us to get everything out of boxes (most) and  be able to actually get to something at the  bottom with ease.  I wanted to keep it very reasonable yet durable.

I choose to use MDF and 2 X 4′s to build the entire thing.  Jason (Hubby) wanted them to actually look nice.  (Not sure why, it has doors….to close and cover it all of the junk we can’t part with)  So I told him OK!  He picked out the color, he cut all the cuts and I painted and made it all look pretty.

So all of this stuff was in there.  I started pulling it all out when I remembered I didn’t take a before picture.  I wasn’t about to put it all back in the closet.

Kind of sad looking though.

I pre-painted everything before install.  From experience, it’s much easier and faster to touch up paint afterwards.  Versus trying to tape off the walls and painting during.

The kids were extremely helpful…..

We figured out how high the first shelf should go based on the height of a normal tote that would go on the floor.  Jason made his measurements and then attached the supports, made from 2 X 4′s, into studs in the wall.

And the painted boards look really nice.

The tools…level is always good.

We decided that making the shelves the full length and depth of the closet, would give us the most storage out of the closet.  Only tricky part, was getting them all in.  We had to start from the bottom and build up, one shelf at a time.

Then I added center supports being the shelves are SO long.

I marked the center of the shelf, then marked the center of the 2 X 4 and lined them up to ensure I got them all in the center and lined up with each other.

We originally planned on 4 shelves, but during the installing process we decided not to add the last shelf.

I LOVE the storage space we have now!!  I’m still working on sorting through stuff we could really just sell or toss, but for now, it looks clean!