Curtain Ball

As part of our closet door-palooza at Chez Waffles (part 1 of which was covered here) we also finally got around to covering two other area from prying eyes.

 

First up was our little linen closet at the end of our little hallway.  Location wise it is awesome as it is located right next to all three of our upstairs bedrooms, and came kitted out with shelves.

 

The look on move in day was not so hot however....

So, as part of our pre-move in prep, we covered all the weird green closet paint with a fresh coat of white (BM Chantilly Lace - our go to white around here), and loaded a bunch of stuff in it.  And then it sat door less for oh..... about 6-ish months- yeah, terrible I know!

Towards the end of the basement reno we had managed to paint the door white to match the rest of the trim in the house, but we were hesitating on the hardware. 

Our hesitation was that we were trying to find something low-profile to open and close the door with as we didn't like how the old doorknob poked out into the walkway.  After searching high and low, we came up with what we thought to be a rather brilliant solution.

We painted the interior of the doorknob hole in matching white trim paint, and installed a roller ball mechanism that secures the door against the existing latch plate (with the help of a spare paint stir stick to wedge it in nice and tight- love those things!)

The roller is pretty sensitive, so  a simple tug is all it takes to swing the door open, and when closed we have a nice streamlined look, combined with our re-finished floors - who woulda believed that beauty was hiding under that disgusterous forest green nightmare!- and fresh paint it's a huge improvement in refreshing our upstairs.

 

The other place we tackled closet doors was our master- a room you have barely (never?) seen....

We are lucky to have inherited pretty roomy storage in our master, considering the age of our house. It may not be the modern walk-in closet, but have large his and her's closets were the 1960's equivilant, and we can't complain as they offer storage room a plenty.

The old and dilapidated louvered bi-folds on the other hand, were not really floating our boat, so from the get go they were taken out and stored in our carport.

H and I struggled for a long time with what to do with these doors, as painting the louvers white to match the rest of the trim would been a nightmare (trust me... I know from experience, that is not a fun or satisfying job!)  We I have a long-term vision of blowing out the closets to really maximize the storage potential with a full wall of Ikea PAX closets, so we wanted an inexpensive solution to our exposed clothing situation while we make the longer term decisions.

So, with all that, what we ended up doing was.....

A wall of curtains that by chance blend right into the wall, giving our room some extra textural and visual softness.  How did we maximise our 'for today' solution.

Step 1.
We removed the existing shelf and hanging pole and painted them bright and white.

Step 2.
We slid 1 meter of existing door less Ikea Pax units that we brought over from Belgium into each closet space (actually if I'm honest, our movers re-built and "slipped" those units into our closets).

Step 3.
Add a butler's hook (not sure if that is the real name) that we also had kicking around from Belgium in the small piece of wall for our evening wardrobe prep.


And again, there we kinda stalled for a long time - the leftover space next to the Ikea units becoming two piles of black holes of c-rap collection.  Fast forward almost 1 year and we finally picked up this project again.


Step 4.
Finally spend the 10 minutes to install a extra long curtain pole and another 20 in front of hte sewing machine hemming a pair of simple white linen like tab top curtains to hide all of the semi-organized crazy.

Step 5.
Cut down one of the old hanging poles and install a short section in the 'leftover" space in each closet. to add more hanging space

Step 6. 
Visit the local ReStore and find inexpensive wall pieces to provide adjustable storage, and install them in the small place leftover from the Ikea units.

Step 7.
Cut down some spare shelf pieces from the Ikea units to the exact size of the extra spaces, and install.
Load up the shelves with more semi-organized chaos.

Step 8. 
Call it "done for now", close the curtains and enjoy the serenity the curtains bring the space.

 

 

Budget breakdown:

 

Bedroom:

Curtain pole + brackets and finials: $5

Curtains: $10 second hand (but would have been $40 new)

Shelf clips: 2 packs @ $2 each =$4

Shelf wall brackets: 2 @ $5 = $10

Hook for wall: already owned ($10 if we had had to buy)

 

Linen Closet:

Roller ball: $5 from Rona

Paint: leftover BM Chantilly Lace

 

Total $34

 

Added to the $43.50 from part 1 and we managed to swing all that concelement for less than $80, but in our minds it's pretty priceless not having to stare at all our clothes and misc c-rap every day.

 

 

Update - the bench you see peeking out in the last image is the fully re-done bench mentioned here and  here - never got around do doing a final reveal post on it though, oops!