Closet Desires
In between tiling and grouting, I finally got around to straightening out the closet in the master bedroom.
Chez Melendy, like most vintage houses was not designed with closets. For some reason back then, your average homeowner didn't understand the need to own 20 pairs of shoes and have a place to store them along with those boxes of slides of your aunt Agnes' trip to Yellowstone in 1948. Where nowadays culture has progressed to the point where we can stuff our attics, garages, and off-site storage units with enough unused items to choke a planet, in the days when Chez Melendy was built, people were foolish enough to consider an armoire sufficient for storing their wardrobes.
When trying to decide how to organize the small closet I was able to squeeze into the master bedroom plan, we consulted many storage sites and magazines. Unfortunately almost all the closet systems were too large and unwieldy for our funky little space.
After all the ogling at glossy photos and measuring this way and that in hopes of achieving the closet of our dreams, I ended up down at the hardware store buying two lengths of wooden dowels and three sets of wall brackets for mounting them.
Anyone who's ever hung a clothes rod knows that this seemingly simple project rarely goes without a hitch. I was doing fine until I tried to mount a bracket on the one upstairs wall that still had old plaster lathe behind the plasterboard. The toggle bolt I was using couldn't go in far enough to spring open and get a hold. Well I had already drilled a hole large enough for the toggle bolt but now too large for a standard solid wall anchor. The answer came in a special solid wall anchor that was deeply threaded like a large wood screw. This anchor was able to grab onto the plasterboard as it was screwed into the large hole. I was then able to use a smaller wood screw to anchor the wall bracket to that.
Our little closet is unlikely to garner a mention in "Closet Beautiful" but we're happy with the way it came out and expect it will hold our wardrobes just fine and also act a reminder not accumulate too much baggage.
Comments