Functional, Practical Master Closet Upgrade

If you have been following me on Instagram, you know that my husband and I recently redid our master bedroom closet.

It turned into a fiasco when we discovered that I never actually measured the width and depth of our closet but purchased the materials to upgrade the space regardless.

This mishap on my part resulted in a very large Wayfair return and multiple trips to Lowe’s over the course of three weekends. However, as one of you kindly pointed out, it actually is not my fault — it’s Justin’s for believing my measurements (or lack thereof) in the first place.

Thanks for always standing by my side, gal pals (hahahaha).

Before we started working on our closet, it was a standard space with those metal wall shelves you typically see in pantries and closets.

It was important to me to remove these because they don’t maximize the storage potential in our closet.

The space is actually a good size — each long wall is 8-feet and the short wall is 5-feet — but with only the metal wall shelves, there is not much room for organizing and storage (which we need plenty of in our small house).

The first thing we did was remove the old shelves and patch the holes they left behind in the walls.

They absolutely wrecked our walls, which we anticipated. We had the same issue when we redid our laundry room after we moved in last year.

After the holes were patched, we painted the closet bright white and then set to work putting together one of the DIY closet systems I purchased from Wayfair.

The closet kit features a tower with six shelves — exactly what I wanted for more storage — and three rods for hanging.

It was easy to put together (thanks, husband) but was tedious and took a couple hours.

After that kit was completely finished and installed, Justin and I realized that the closet isn’t wide enough for the matching second kit I bought. It would fit, but we would not have enough room to walk around in closet if we installed the second kit to the opposite wall.

We HAD to do something on that other long wall, though. That is technically Justin’s side of the closet and without any shelving, he had no place to hang his clothes.

I spent a few days brainstorming, trying to come up with a creative solution, before I realized I was way overcomplicating things.

A shelf long enough to fit the wall, brackets and a clothes-hanging rod were all we really needed for Justin’s side.

We headed to Lowe’s to gather the materials … and then we returned those materials the next day when we realized that the rod and shelf we bought were too long for the wall. The wall I never actually measured. Rookie mistake.

Once we were home with the correct items, installing them was a breeze and we were able to finish putting our closet back together.

The only thing missing that I want to do is replace the cube storage that is currently on the back wall with a white dresser for myself. That will allow us to remove my old dresser from our bedroom and have more living space in there.

I love how attractive and functional our closet is now. By removing the old shelves and utilizing more of the vertical wall space, we were able to add much more storage that truly serve our needs.