A Closet. Inside a Closet.

It’s totally weird, but inside the closet in the study is, well, another closet.

See it? It’s so weird. I actually think the closet in the closet is original, but the outer part of the closet, is not.

That made sense in my head.

Someone put some white plastic-like wall board up at some point. And when we moved in, there were slats on the sides for shelves, but no shelves. We added 3 really cheap pieces of wood, to act as shelves when this room was the temporary kitchen. This was our pantry / food storage for about 6 months!

The other piece of awesomeness is the giant pipe in the back of the closet.

It really blends in well, don’t you think?

So, I started to wonder what I could do to it. After all, it’s a closet inside a closet. And this closet is going to be used for all the stuff we don’t need to see – office supplies, filing cabinets, the printer…. stuff like that. We’re not going to see it much. So I started to think about how I could make it pretty, with the least amount of effort possible.

Step one! Use the leftover black paint from the crown moulding on the inside!

Already, it’s like night and day.

Then, I took the cheap pine board that we used on the inside, and added a face to them – just a 1×2.

I had to trim them down a little to fit – they needed to be short than the shelves, so they’d fit over the shelf rails on the sides of the closet.

After I trimmed the faces, I glued, nails and clamped them, and let them dry overnight.

Time to dye and shellack!

I used the leftover dye from the apothecary cabinet. So really, for this job, all I bought was the face pieces. Shelf upgrade for about $10!

The cheapest wood has the most character. I probably wouldn’t build a desk out of these, but I love them for what I’m doing here!

I tool them inside to shellack. I always do the bottom first, so if anything gets drippy or nicked when I turn it over, the top is still nice.

Shellack is my favorite.

It looks amazing!

If I could do it again, I would only do one coat of dye (I used two) so they’re a little darker than the mouldings in the room.

It looks so nice for ten bucks!

The pipe doesn’t jump out as much now, which is definitely a plus.

I love the wood against the wallpaper!

Not a bad makeover for a few hours work and a couple of dollars!