Master Bedroom Closet Update

Our master bedroom closet was a disaster. I'm not exaggerating, either. The wire shelving was pulling out of the walls (or, in the case of one shelf, fell out five+ years ago), the closet had never been painted since the house was built in the mid 90s, and we had stuff EVERYWHERE. You see, we have a decent size house but we lack decent storage--no basement and very very limited attic space (basically enough room for our Christmas decorations.) Because of this, I tend to stuff everything I can into our closet.

It was bad--are you ready?

This is looking to the right after you go into the closet. I was gathering up stuff for a consignment sale, so I have even more bags and tubs of stuff than usual stuffed in here. The shelf with all the white hangers was falling out of the wall on the left side, so I could only put clothes on one side of the shelf. There used to be another shelf in here, but it fell down shortly after we moved into this house and we never fixed it because we knew we were going to redo the closet...we just didn't realize how long it would take us to get around to doing it!
See, here is that same side of the closet all emptied out of stuff. Not pretty! You can see where the anchors are for the shelf that fell down as well as the holes for the shelf that is halfway to falling down.

Last year we were at Costco and saw a beautiful wood closet system there--I think it was about $300 or so. At any rate, it was a great price for a quality system, so we bought it. We put it in the garage and left it there. For a year. Ooops. Finally enough was enough and I decided that we were going to do our closet and get it done with. And by "we" I mean my husband. I helped empty the closet and find stuff to donate and then I put everything back in the closet afterward, but he did the building and painting.
Ahhh, so much better! Compare that to the first picture on this post--what a difference! The closet system is SO sturdy and looks so nice! It is the John Louis Home Premier System in Red Mahoghany. I love it! You can configure it in all sorts of ways and all those shelves in the middle are adjustable. Gorgeous. I don't think Costco sells it anymore, but I did find it on Amazon. Unfortunately the Amazon price is at least $100 more than what we paid--but it still is worth it.
Love it!! It installed pretty well, too, according to my husband, and it is SO sturdy the way he installed it. We did have a couple of pieces (a camlock and a closet bar support) break while he was installing it. I called the customer service number and the telephone was answered by a real person (that shocked me!) who was so nice and polite. She shipped out the problem parts without any hesitation and we received them within just three days--and we do not live anywhere remotely near their corporate offices. Absolutely amazing customer service.
Remember that wall with the falling down shelves on the right side of my closet? Here it is now. No more shelves! We took everything out of the closet, filled in the holes from the old system, ripped off the baseboards (they're still MIA--we're slowly upgrading all the trim in the house to white millwork) and painted the whole closet white.)
I still have a lot of totes in here, but it isn't overwhelming any more...mostly because all the consignment sale stuff now is downstairs in what used to be the toy closet...the sale is next month and I'm looking forward to getting rid of this stuff!
Ahhh!
This is the left side of the closet. Love all this space. We can actually walk into our walk-in closet again! I'm thinking about moving a dresser into here to open up space in our bedroom. And yes, I know the "red mahogany" color doesn't match the oak of the doorframe, but remember, we're (eventually!) changing everything to white--including the trim and doors.
The bars are metal and the hangers can slide along the full length. I still have more organization and decorating to do in here. I want to get big flat boxes to put on the tippy top shelf and use those to collect gifts for my children. That will eliminate a few of the totes I have stored in here.

Definitely more projects to come in here--but for now we are so happy to have a closet that doesn't make us cringe every time we open it!