Adding a Closet to an Upstairs Landing

When my wife and I first saw our house, we knew it was the perfect house for us. It had everything that we could ever want - enough bedrooms, a huge yard, a workshop, not too many square feet. It was lacking nothing! 

After we moved in, we realized that, while we still loved our house, it had one quirk. It had weird closet space. Every bedroom had a closet, the master bedroom had two (we converted

one into a desk space), but there were not common closets. No coat closet, no linen closet, no junk closet, no central closet. Nothing. Nada. Zip. 

After years of trying to figure out which wall to knock out to add a closet, we decided to add one at the top of our stairs where our 1980's cabinets and countertop were rocking out. We ended that dance party by tearing out the cabinets. This was about the same time I got my new Greenworks 24V driver and impact driver set. Demo and construction were a great way to break these tools in, and I was really impressed with the light weight and power. From start to finish, these two wonderful tools got the job done. 

Once the cabinets were out and the wall was patched, it was time to paint the landing. I then framed out the opening for the closet door, installed a bifold door, drywalled, and textured (I've never enjoyed texturing, I've found some tricks throughout the years. I'm planning on doing a tutorial blog, including some of my worst texturing jobs, sometime in the near future).

Once the wall was up, it was time to add the shelves. I made it easy on myself and just used plywood sitting on 1x2s (we jazzed up the shelves by splatter painting them - a fun way to spend some time with the 8-year-old and use up some paint). 

When all was said and done, the project cost about $125 (not including the paint) and took a little more than a week. It could have been knocked out in a weekend, but...I have a job. And now we have a place to actually store our vacuum, our towels and sheets, and all the random bits and bobs that normally end up scattered all around the house. One central catch-all to make everybody happy! 

Now if I could just do something about all the books we have around the house (*cough, *cough, foreshadowing)...