Into the closet … a DIY project

In our office - which is a converted one room schoolhouse - we have a closet for storage of paper office products. For years, along with the paper supplies, we have been putting other things in the closet - old vacuum cleaners, duffle bags, anything we needed to put away. It had reached the point where we could’t get to the paper - which, by the way, was in a state of major disarray.

Unfortunately, I did not take a before picture, but this is what it looked like -
the black hole of closets.

We spent almost two weeks cleaning the closet out. The rule - if we haven’t used it in the past year, it needed to find another home. The lightweight metal shelves - gone - one to the trash because it was bent from the weight of the paper and one to the neighbor.

Then for the remodel -

The walls and ceiling were covered with chip board. A handy trap door was installed in the ceiling to allow access to the area above the ceiling. (A suspended ceiling was installed in the main room long ago because the school room had 14-foot high ceilings.) A much needed ceiling light was installed. Door trim was added and a new closet door installed.

On one wall, there is an tangled web of electrical wires from the phone system. We asked the phone company to come out and reorganize the wires. They, of course, were more than willing to fix their mess - at a substantial fee. So, a custom-built cabinet with latching cover was installed over the wires.

New shelf brackets were mounted and pre-finished white shelves were installed. Organizing racks were installed to hold smaller, loose items.

The trim, cabinet and trap door were painted white. The final touch - carpet squares for the floor.

And then - we filled the closet up again - but this time it is organized and it’s much safer to go ‘into the closet.’

Now, on to the next project … the copier room.