DIY Built-in Shelves

You mean to tell me you're supposed to have shelves in your closet?

The sad thing is we've lived in this house for four years and still have several home improvement projects on our to-do list. To be fair, some of those remaining projects are beyond our (extremely limited) skill set and require paying someone else oodles of money to do it for us. One of those projects was to make something out of the unfinished closet in our bedroom. Our house is short on closet space to begin with so it's always seemed pointless to have a nice, tall closet with no shelves. I'd already been getting fed up with the lack of storage space in our house and the ensuring clutter, but it wasn't until I saw The Hand Me Down House's built-in shelves that I was inspired and motivated to try to tackle the project myself. Since my husband is a boy and doesn't care about things like closets I was on my own with this one, so it was nice to have the extra online help.

Ugly, pointless, empty closet before

Her tutorial is fantastic with all of the details you could need. I'm not at all experienced with carpentry but with a little help from the lumber cutting department at Lowe's I had no trouble following her steps. I only diverted from her instructions twice: I skipped the caulking step and left off the trim. I like how finished her shelves look with the trim but as mine are inside a closet behind a curtain I decided to save the extra $5. As a result, the whole project cost less than $10. To spruce it up a bit I used some light grey-blue "oops" paint I'd picked up previously to paint the exposed brackets and shelves, stenciled a little design on the wall with the same paint, and lined the shelves with some of this pretty textured wallpaper from Home Depot:


I'm far too proud of myself for being so handy even though the project was so simple. Thirty minutes ago I finally got the nerve to put a few things on the shelves. If I hear a loud crash during the night I'll know exactly what it is. Let's hope my handiwork holds up!