Lemons

When trying to come up with a title for this blog post, all that came to mind was 'Lemons'. Because that's what I got. 

11 days ago, I was cleaning out Baby Goats' closet and found that the back corner was covered in mold. After the initial freak out (everyone does that when they find mold, right?), then carefully assessing the situation... it wasn't looking good. Worst case scenario: Bathroom Remodel.

Turns out there were no leaks and we didn't have to tear the bathroom apart! Exciting stuff, right? Except that I still had to deal with the mess left in the closet after the mold was removed. Cell phone pic of what I was left with. 

Concrete subfloor, patched drywall, no baseboards, and a whole lotta "What-the-heck-do-I-do-now?"

I finished drywalling and texturing the walls, added some cheap flooring and baseboards, and ended up with a closet that was pretty much exactly how it looked before I found the mold. 

That was find and good, and all, but i was already working in there! Might as well Make it functional (lemons to lemonade!)... 

And pink..!

I started out with these grand ol' plans to do a built-in closet tower, a desk, and some toy storage in there. That was before I measured it and realized that there was not enough room to do much of anything. This is a reach-in closet that measures 70" x 24', so a 2' closet tower would pretty much eat away all of the functional space (the rest is tucked into the corners and wouldn't be fun to sit in to do homework). 

Ahhh well! Found these plans for the closet tower from Ana White (of course!) and built it from the most amazing plywood on the market, Purebond. 

But I modified the plans (is there ever a time that I don't?). Instead of building the tower and then building a base, I just notched out space for my baseboards with my jig saw before assembling the tower. 

And added 3 drawers.

I chose to keep the side shelves the depth of the original shelf, at just under 12". It makes the closet not feel so cramped, which is how I imagined it would feel if I did the shelves the depth of the closet tower. Also decided to do two shelves at the top of the tower, and only one short shelf so that we would have room, later on, to hang full-length dresses/coats. 

For now, it gets to house a giant recycle box full of stuffed animals.

There are still some finishing touches (obviously handles or pulls on the drawers, and I have to attach the threshold), but for now, we have a livable, much more functional closet that is mold-free... and probably the prettiest "room" in the house..!