I really like our house, but being almost 101 years old, it does have its issues, the biggest being that lack of every day storage. There was just no place to “hang your hat” or keys or coat or cell phone or book bag or anything like that. I’ve been planning on doing something for awhile to address this. I almost went and got some old gym lockers a school was getting rid of in NY, but it was too far and I didn’t have a truck. Finally I just decided to build something myself so it could be customized for the space and look exactly how I want it. My wife and I worked up some sketches and trying to keep in mind how will will use it now as well as how it would be used in the future. We have had no place to put our Dyson vacuum cleaner so that was defiantly something we wanted to build in. We each wanted a “cubby” for ourselves to put those cell phone, ipod, book bag kinda things as well as a general area for hanging coats. We are having a baby girl in March so we built in an area just for her also.

The first thing we did after figuring out what we wanted it to do was to measure the space and see how big we wanted the closet to be. Things like how far do we want it to come out from the wall. How tall it should be so it’s big enough but doesn’t overpower the room. How close it can be to our doorway, stuff like that. The above image is one of our early plans and does not include the a lot of or ideas, but it gives you an idea of how it all started coming together.

Once we got it figured out I asked my father-in-law for a bit of help and we went and got the wood. I used oak plywood over the summer to build a head board with shelves and really like how it looked with our grey walls so I went with oak again. I cut each piece using a Boche jigsaw I got for my birthday and a clamped straight edge. I like the jigsaw better than a table saw or a skill saw because it doesn’t splinter the wood. A least not until the blade gets dull. I think I went through four blades by the time I was done. It took me awhile to cut each piece. I think I re-checked my measurements at least four times each cut. I figure at over $40 a sheet it would be an expensive mistake if I messed up.

Here is a picture of the space it’s going into. After I cut each piece I checked them in the space against the wall.

I built a toe kick the same hight as a 2×4 so when I hang the doors I can set a 2×4 on the ground and square them up easier. You’ll see what I mean when I post about the doors. This was the first time I used a biscuit joiner to fasten things something together. It was so big I had to get a friend to help me line everything up and had to barrow some pipe clamps to clamp the sidewalls to the back. It would have been easier to set the back on top of the sidewalls but I didn’t want the back to show from the outside. With a little work and a slightly gluey floor we got it. I also used a finish nailer and filled the nail holes with a mixture of glue and sawdust so that it sands well, accepts stain and matches the wood. I’ve found it works way better than any wood filler and is stronger too.

I added the inner walls gluing them and screwing them from the bottom, back and top so that the screws would be hidden.

So here is the basic structure, with the vacuum area. Our daughter will get the opposite side where I’ll add a bar for her little coats and stuff. The middle is the general adult coat spot and the rest of the cubbies will be claimed by my wife and I. I filled the gap in upper right with mix of wood glue and sawdust from sanding. The cut was only a 1/16″ off but for some reason looks bigger in this photo. I continually checked to make sure things we square to the bottom I built which I had leveled in the house.

From a suggestion from my father-in-law I built a template out of some scrap wood and drilled some holes to make adjustable shelves, and them with the help of my friend again we moved it back inside. This last week we’ve (my wife and I) been coating the wood and I’ve been building doors. Which I will post about when they are finished. This has been a lot of fun to work on and great learning experience. If you like the idea of building your own stuff for your house I recommend it. I’m not the most skilled woodworker in the world but I do my best to make up for it by going slow, asking questions when I’m not sure about things, trying not to get frustrated and just enjoying the process. When I’m don’t we’ll have something that you can’t buy in a store that is custom built for its own space. Very satisfying.

See Part 2, Making and Hanging the Closet Doors.