IKEA PAX Wardrobe Hack

We had 2 very ugly, very dated, almost uninhabitable rooms in the back of the house.  One was pink, one was purple and the windows were rotted and leaked into our family room and kitchen below.  I wish I had before pictures of them but to be honest we really forgot about them for a few years and thought of them more as storage.  Crazy low ceilings, a sauna in the summer, a freezer in the winter and stunk b/c our dog peed in there when we were away from home too long.   

 

Then after we added baby boys to our family faster than a {insert any ‘yo mamma’ joke here}, we were out of space and decided to renovate these 2 rooms to become our master suite.  I showed you our bathroom reno and the hardwood floors installation last spring but our bedroom has been a work in progress. 

One such work in progress area was our dilemma of having no closets in this room.  Because we combined 2 rooms into one and the once connecting walls were the walls that held the individual rooms’ closets it meant that the new combined bigger space had no closets.  What we lacked in closets we made up for in random doors.  We removed 7 in the process including a door connecting the master bedroom into our 4 year old's bedroom. 



We dry walled over that door and were left with a blank wall that we decided to use for closets.  We hemmed and hawed for a while on this one.  What to do, what to do… 
I love me some IKEA.  Remember this?  We really liked the PAX wardrobe system and wanted something similar but also knew we wanted something to stand the test of time. 
              

Enter our latest Ikea hack.  We started with 2 wide units and 2 narrow units.  Our ceilings are not even 80” but our height options at IKEA were 96” or 75.”  We rolled the dice, bought 96” units, cut them down to size and assembled.  6 units aren’t cheap so it was a gamble but it worked out just fine. 
We added in the accessories that went with the unit and then our super talented brother-in-law built a custom hardwood frame around the units and a custom hamper drawer and display shelving to break up the run of doors.  This way we had the closet guts with a high quality frame and doors that will hold up to wear without spending a fortune. 

We lived with closets like this (no doors) for about 6 months but it gives you a good idea of the organization options.  I somehow got my paint cans swapped while working on 2 different projects at the same time and accidentally pained this entire unit in exterior white instead of the Benjamin Moore Decorators White in Semi-Gloss like I intended.  Nothing like wasting a day painting something that will only need to be repainted.  I guess the upside is that my closet will now withstand zero degree temperatures and snow if it ever needs to.



                    

This is hands down my favorite part.  A drawer hiding our hampers.  Nothing looks worse than spending a ton of time and money on a room to make it look good only to have dirty laundry sitting in the corner.  And just to keep it real my hamper is never empty…I actually dumped the laundry on the floor just outside of this shot.  The next step in this process is to build drawer fronts to put on the face of the drawer to match the doors.

                    

Then my electrical engineer husband added lighting into the closet that automatically turns on and off when the door opens.  A Villanova engineering degree at work.



Last but definitely not least we built tongue and groove shaker style doors.  The flu tore through our house over the holidays and we were going stir crazy being quarantined in the house so we built them one day at a time while at the same time giving doses of Tylenol, Vicks and doing insane amounts of laundry.  Merry Christmas.

*Update: By popular demand I've given a brief "How To" on building doors like these here.

We added crown molding to the top to give it a custom look. 

                         

We’ve been using the closets for close to a year now and the Ikea interior units have held up perfectly so I’m really happy we went this route.  Like everything we do it is 95% complete and will stay that way for a  while.  It was a. lot. of. work but we ended up with exactly what we wanted and are super happy with the result.

DIY Height Chart

I can’t believe how fast the kids are growing up.  Bittersweet.  We’ve been tracking their growth with a Sharpie on our office door trim:

I didn’t want to lose those priceless markings but since I painted the bookshelf I needed to repaint the rest of the trim in the room (“needed to” is relative I understand).  I picked up a pre-cut 1” x 5” x 6’ board from Home Depot and then sanded, conditioned, stained and poly’ed it.  Then I printed out the numbers on paper, cut them out and traced them on the board.

I went over the tracings with a black Sharpie.

I placed it on the side of the renovated bookshelves because I liked how it picked up the color of the french doors.  

                      

Voila! A moveable, independent height chart!

Shared with House of Hepworths

I didn’t mean to do it…

We are in the process of switching computers so I wanted to find my Adobe Lightroom CD so it was ready to install on the new machine.  After digging through our bookshelf in our office I got frustrated and took everything off the shelves to reorganize…then I figured as long as it was empty I may as well sand it down and refinish it.  Does everyone’s brain’s operate this way?


I decided early on that this was the very definition of turd polishing.  The shelf was built on the old carpet and when it was removed it left a ring of carpet pad.  There were gaps at the sides and ceiling.  It was pretty bad but I pushed on with the polishing
.
This is the before of the room when we moved in. 
          
I sanded the bookshelf with an orbital sander and then primed it with an oil based primer.  I don’t usually use oil based unless it is a wood I’m not totally confident is perfectly dry or in instances like these where I need a really good sticky coverage.  It is really stinky stuff so keep the windows open and place bowls of baking soda around the room.  Then I painted it with 3 coats of Benjamin Moore’s Decorator White leftover from our master bath reno.

I was pleasantly surprised with the result!

Before & After:

              

Crown molding now hides the gap between the shelf & the ceiling.  Filler trim covers the gap between the walls and shelves.

        

Gross carpet pad that the shelves were apparently built on top of now hidden by baseboard trim.

       
       
       

Labels for the baskets to hide the clutter.

And to keep it real, it actually isn’t all that well organized. This is what one of those baskets looks like.

Since we already had out the nail gun and paint we also decided to trim out our master bedroom.  Oh and since we were already working on the master bedroom Sean figured he’d build 6 tongue and groove closet doors from scratch for our new closets.  That’s normal behavior right?  It is a good thing we’re married to each other.  Anyone else would divorce us.


I never did find the CD.  Turns out I never had one.  It was a download from Adobe’s site.
Oops.

Countdown to Noon!

In my past life staying up until midnight, drinking champagne and watching the ball drop was a good time.  Now I can’t remember the last time stayed up until midnight…heck I haven’t even seen Saturday Night Life in years.

Holidays take on a whole new meaning and become a little more special experiencing them through the eyes of children.  New Year’s Eve is usually reserved for adults but in order to bring the fun to our kids Sean and I threw a “Countdown to Noon” party with our friends and their little ones.

We had an easy menu of strata, bagels, fruit and cookies, all of which could be made the day before.  There were bubbles in containers shaped like champagne bottles, noise makers and hats for the kids.  At the stroke of noon we had a “ball drop” (balloons) and kissed our babies. 

All in all a pretty sweet way to start out the new year. 

Party hats for the big kids…

…and for the little guys to!

The party hats doubled as snacks for some.

Bubbles in plastic champagne bottles:

A “ball drop” (balloons) at noon.

Hugs from the little ones started 2012 out perfect.