A place for everything

It's been a few weeks since we've posted but we've been working on one of my very favorite projects, the master closet!  After much thought and debate, we decided to use pre-built boxes to customize the space.  On the last house, we completely custom-built the master bedroom closets (along with most of the other closets), using nothing more than plywood and 1x2 trim - and while we were very happy with the end result, it took a fair bit of time to custom build, paint, and finish everything.  This time, we have an even larger master closet and wanted even more customization so it would have been an even bigger project to do from scratch.  At the same time, we just couldn't bring ourselves to pay someone else to build a custom closet for us so the solution, surprisingly (to me anyway), was to use Ikea's Pax system and customize the installation.

We started with a blank canvas - just your basic room here.  The later pictures get a lot better as we finally bought a little attachment to turn an iPhone camera into a wide angle lens, which makes it much easier to photograph rooms like this.  But for now, this will have to do.  Nothing to see here but blank white walls anyway!

We knew we wanted to use a very dark gray trim so up went the paint swatches:

These are (from left to right): Restoration Hardware Flint, Glidden Gray Tabby, Behr Dark Ash, and Behr Asphalt Gray - they all look really similar to each other but we ultimately went with the most black/gray, which was Behr Asphalt Gray

Once we had a color, we painted all three walls that would have boxes so that the backs match the trim:

No going back now!

This is suddenly a very dark room

Next up - building the boxes - because of their height (we used the 93 1/8"), it was easier to build them in place.  We skipped the backs so that the dark walls would be visible and added a brace at the top of each box, which provided better stability than the rather flimsy backs that are included.

Two down, many to go

Getting all the boxes in place and starting to space them out

Before we started adding trim, we put a first coat of paint on the 1x3 trim.  We placed a big order of floor and window/door trim, along with the closet trim, so suddenly our living room turned back into a storage facility:

This is a lot of trim

We'll be busy for the next few months!

Setting up a painting station for trim

Now that's the right color!

We spaced out the boxes so that 1x3 trim fit the sides and 1x4 is on the top and bottom.  We'll add crown moulding to the top as well for a full built-in look but that will come later.

With top and bottom trim

And now with sides

Using the wide angle lens

Halfway there 

Trim in place

Next up was adding the shelves and drawers.  We forgot to take pictures before we moved all our stuff in so...this will have to do!  We went with a mix of hanging spaces, drawers, and shelves and it has increased our storage space dramatically.  Since it's one of the few closets we have finished so far, it's stuffed with lots of stuff that might not otherwise be in the master closet, but happily, everything still fit.  It's a huge improvement and we're really happy to have this project nearly finished.