I can’t even express how much I hated working on this project. But I’m so happy I finished it! I wanted to save money. I tried not to install the door frame on the back of the entry, not to paint the back of the door, and not to frame the vent into the wall. But in the end, my mind wouldn’t let me do it.
Let me remind you what this closet looked like before…
And now, after a little paint, trim, and a piece of plywood to hide the HVAC unit, it looks like this…
In a perfect world, I would have built-in shelves here that took advantage of every spare inch of space. But since this isn’t a perfect situation and I need to be able to easily move the shelves if the HVAC unit needs maintenance, I had to stick with these shelving units on wheels.
I was able to fit two of them in here. I’m not sure what I’m going to store in here yet. I still need to organize the entire studio, and for now, I think I’ll have more than enough storage space. So this could be a space I can grow into as I start using the studio.
Since I didn’t want to have a plain green wall, I decided to hang one of my acrylic art prints here to add some color and interest to an otherwise very boring space. I love opening the closet door and seeing that colorful print.
I had initially planned to add some shelves to the area on the right, but since I haven’t even filled the shelves I have, I decided to wait for now.
It was a pain to have to work with this mass of air ducts, so I did the best I could. It’s still not pretty, but at least I don’t have to look at the ugly side of an HVAC unit anymore. Adding this piece of plywood here and notching out the area for the ducts made an eyesore a little more tolerable.
And now, you have to go into the closet and look around the plywood to see the ugly HVAC unit.
I had planned to leave it like this when I showed you my progress last week. It looked like this…
But that was another thing my brain wouldn’t let me get past. I ended up covering the plywood box with a nicer piece of sanded plywood, adding some trim, and painting it to match.
I also ended up making the door frame the same as the other doors.
I didn’t do it because I couldn’t help myself. I was actually planning on doing a much simpler edge on the closet side of the door, but it turned out I didn’t have the wood on hand to do a simpler edge. However, it turned out I had what I needed to do this style in my scrap pile, so I did. It’s not the highest quality wood. It had been rained on and was warped, so I ran it through the planer a couple of times to make it look better. It’s fine for the inside of a storage closet, but I wouldn’t have used it in a prominent location in the house.
And then I made a quick and easy frame around the wall vent.
I really wanted to leave it unfinished, but I’m not like that. I don’t mind imperfections and not using the best quality materials inside a closet, but it turns out I don’t like leaving projects completely unfinished in a closet. Here’s what it looked like before…
And here it is now. I also used wood from my scrap pile for this. I wanted things to look finished, but I wanted to spend as little money as possible.
This is the area where I had originally planned to put some shelves, but I changed my mind because I have more than enough shelves for now. And I may need hooks to hang things instead of needing more shelves, so this is an ideal area for that. But for now, I don’t need any additional storage space.
Anyway, working on this was so boring and I had a hard time staying motivated to finish it. But now that it’s finished, I’m so glad to have this clean, organized space to use! This is one of those projects that’s been hanging around in my head for way too long. It feels good to finally have it finished.
Side note: I finally got a new laptop and spent the last two days setting up the new one, transferring all my files, and installing my programs. After months and months of using a laptop with a keyboard that didn’t work normally (the W, L, K, O, and 2/@ keys only worked intermittently, and sometimes didn’t work at all), I finally have a new laptop with a keyboard that actually works. So hopefully that means my posts from now on will contain about 99% fewer typos than they have over the past few months.
Addicted 2 Decorating is a place where I share my DIY and decorating experience while remodeling and decorating the 1948 home my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has multiple sclerosis and is unable to do physical labor, so I do most of the work around the house alone. You can learn more about me here.
