First DIY home project: complete!

I cannot possibly express how ridiculously excited I am about our first real DIY home project. As I’ve mentioned before my husband and I are not exactly pros in the DIY/construction field. (I’m thrilled when we successfully assemble a piece of IKEA furniture…)

But we did it!!! We built and installed shelves!

I know…I know…it’s not like we renovated a kitchen or installed a roof…but hey, you’ve gotta start somewhere…

Anyway, let me back up a bit…in my music room I’ve got a nice big closet that has been fairly useless since we moved in. It’s a standard closet with a top shelf and rod to hold coat hangers. But since we have a nice little mudroom entrance about 5 feet away there’s not much use for it as a coat closet. Mostly I use it to store office-type supplies that I use for my freelance and teaching business. Unfortunately everything just gets stacked on the floor and without fail, whenever I need something it’s on the bottom of the heap. In general, it’s just annoying but when I’m in the middle of a lesson and need paper for my printer it’s really an issue. Plus, there’s SO much wasted space…

I’d been planning on doing some sort of organization project over the summer. I was originally leaning towards buying a shelving unit to put inside but realized that it would result in a lot of dead space on the sides and top of the unit. I didn’t want to lose that available storage space so I started looking online for other ideas. I found this wonderful tutorial from one of my regular blog-reads, House of Hepworths, and decided that it might be doable!

When my parents were up visiting last week my dad helped me plan out the exact layout and supplies that I’d need and then we spent a good hour or so at Home Depot getting everything together. I am SO thankful for Home Depot’s wood-cutting service. I’m sure I could have attacked the mdf and wood with my little handsaw but it would not have been an enjoyable process (and I’d still probably be working at it).

So anyway, on Tuesday I sanded down and primed the mdf shelves and all the wood pieces for the supports. I used two coats of primer and applied it with a small 3″ roller. I didn’t paint the front of the shelves because I intended to add a trim piece to cover the front. Then on Wednesday I painted all the pieces with two coats of Sherwin-Williams Greek Villa to match the current paint color in the closet. If I was confident in my painting abilities I probably would have painted the shelves a bright white to match the trim and allow for a little variation between the shelves and the wall color; however, I figured I’d have to do touch-ups once they were installed and thought it’d be easier if everything was the same color.

Friday was install day! Luckily Steve was willing to help as it was much easier and enjoyable as a two-person job!

I love how Steve appears to be teaching Merlin the fine art of leveling a shelf…ha! In the future we will probably also need to confine the pets when we’re using power tools in the house. Archimedes wisely stayed upstairs but Merlin and Rogue were surprisingly nosy (even when we were drilling or hammering) and we often had to gently push them away with a spare knee or foot while our hands were full. Not exactly the safest way to work…

Anyway, we started off by removing the wire rack and patching the holes. Then we installed all of the 1″ x 2″ supports and then added a center bracket for additional support. We put up the shelves to see how they fit and then used liquid nails to glue the quarter-round trim pieces to the front. I used painter’s tape to help hold the trim piece tight to the shelf while it dried overnight.

The next morning I took out the shelves and started touch-ups! I purchased a nail set to countersink the nails so that I could cover all the nail holes. I used the same spackle to fill all the nail and screw holes and let that dry. The spackle included a primer so that saved me one step. I painted all the existing scratches and marks in the closet then caulked the seams where the supports met the wall. The closet is 49″ long and the mdf came in a 48″ wide piece so there’s a 1/2″ gap on either side of the shelf. I didn’t want to have to purchase another sheet of mdf so the gaps will just have to do. Unfortunately it means there’s also a weird little open square of space where the supports meet but again it doesn’t bother me too much as it’s only really noticeable when you’re looking up at the shelves. I figure once they’re full of stuff it really won’t be an issue.

And here are my finished shelves! The bottom two are 18″ deep and the top two are 11″. There’s so much room!! I made myself wait another day to let everything dry completely before loading up the shelves!

HALLELUJAH!! I couldn’t be happier! I tend to hoard office supplies (the local Office Max closing was a very lucrative shopping time…) and now I can actually access them when I need them! Seriously, I don’t think I’ll need to buy notebooks, looseleaf paper, or pencils for a decade or so…