We bought our first house in 2012. We moved in in September with full intentions on changing a few MINOR things here and there. As all homeowners should understand, after a few weeks of living in the house, we had already started a list of things we wanted to do, some small weekend projects, others… not so much. Other than painting every room in the house (except the future nursery) we’ve only changed out and painted the front door, but still left on our current to do list (I say current because I’m sure it’ll grow!) is the following:

Gut, totally re-configure, and renovate the master bath, hall bath, and hall closets (doing this in February!!!)
Make a built-in office area in the eat in part of the kitchen
New mantel on the fireplace
Hardwood flooring in the living areas of the house (all of which are carpeted right now)
Carpet in the bedrooms (where there is hardwood…)
Re-configure the laundry room
Add on to the back deck
Paint the trim on the outside of the house
Add some curve appeal
Fence in the back yard (for the pups of course!)
and finally
Repave the driveway

Of course there are other little decorative to do’s that still need to be done (our master bedroom is BARREN) but that’s neither here nor there.

HERE, today, this post is more so on what we recently got to check off our to do list: The Master Closet!

Our master bedroom is a normal old house master bedroom size. Not big but it’s not small either. It’s actually perfect considering we’re hardly ever in our bedroom, except to sleep (duh), but when we’re both in the bedroom getting ready we don’t get into each other’s way. UNLESS we were looking in/getting clothes out of the closet.

I took this picture after we’d already started moving everything out. I was like CRAP STOP and then moved a few things back in just to take the picture. You get the idea though, right? It WAS a normal size non walk in closet.

So first, we removed the bi fold doors. They were crappy anyway. We will at some point put NEW bi fold boors on but in the mean time, I kind of like being able to see my beautiful new walk in closet, free from obstacles! Convenient enough, the future nursery closet was directly behind our closet and we have other plans for that room but that’s for another time 😉 We closed up the existing opening to the future nursery closet with 2×4’s, aka studs, to make an appropriate wall frame.

OK now seems like a good time to mention that, when I say WE, I don’t always mean Neil and myself. More like, Neil and his dad because they did this project on Neil’s days off, while I was at work. Notice the two light bulbs? Yea, something really pretty replaced them!

A few sheets of dry wall hanging and some HEAVY mudding made the giant whole in the future nursery wall disappear… and suddenly we have a walk in closet! And NOW seems like a GREAT time to mention how grateful and thankful I am to have such an awesome handy husband with such an generous handy dad to take on these projects for me. Sure, Neil would have liked a bigger closet but he could have lived without. On the other hand, he knew how much I REALLY BADLY wanted it.

Then came my job. Painting! Of course, I painted it Sherwin William’s Tinsmith grey because it’s the best paint color in the whole wide world. No, I’m not exaggerating. And Neil hung this BEAUTIFUL light fixture that you see in the middle picture. We had something more…. casual bought already but one day, while browsing my local Home Depot, I happened upon the light fixture that I have always pictured would be in my walk in closet some day. And it wasn’t TOO pricey, so I jumped! It totally completes it! It also shines this super neat design throughout the closet. There isn’t anything I don’t love about this light! OK, moving on…

Our closet sat like that for a few days, until we finally went shopping for the shelving. A few days really means a week here. Our clothes lived in our guest bedroom closet and on the guest bed for over a week, y’all. It was chaos in that room and I purposefully did NOT take a picture of it. So above is my AMAZING husband hanging the shelving…stuff. I actually helped with this part! PS, the middle picture makes Neil look like he has some weird male pregnant belly thing going on. It’s just his shirt gapping over (I’m sure you already gathered that). Just to clarify (and to brag on him a little) he is actually really fit <3

And now, the AFTER pictures! My side! As far as the layout of the shelving goes: by having the hanging racks on the side walls instead of on the back wall, I increased my hanging space by an entire foot! You see, I measure this thing out before I decided. I’m smart like that 😉 In the two back corners there’s only the top shelf, making much needed room to hang my dresses and his suits. My side has more top shelf on the back wall, for obvious reasons.

And his side! This angle shows off our shoe shelves better – which I might end up changing a bit but this shelving collection allows for that kind of thing EASILY.

Ta Da! I am so in love with our newly renovated master bedroom closet! I hope you all enjoyed this blog post. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Disclaimer time again: all the images on this blog post were taken with my iPhone. As a photographer and as someone who just likes to document her life, I love that the iPhone 5 has such a strong camera built in. Definitely beats not having to carry about my big heavy DSLR camera all the time!