Who doesn’t love a good before & after!?!? A few weeks ago, we decided that we would finally tackle our linen closet since we’ve been spending so much time at home! This is one of those projects we knew we eventually wanted to do when we bought our home last March but put it on the back burner. I had a bunch of requests to document the entire process so we’re both really excited to share it here with you! It was relatively easy and luckily we had all the tools we needed to complete the process.
Step One
The first thing that we did was completely empty our current linen closet and store everything in the guest bedroom so we could start with a clean slate. We have the slats for wood shelves since the closet was originally wood shelving and one of the owners took them down and put up these white shelves. It made this a lot easier than it would have been if we didn’t have the slats! Definitely still possible, just more challenging.
We had a LOT of stuff in our linen closet and it had no organization even though we tried! Since we knew that we were eventually going to redo the closet, we never spent a ton of time on trying to organize the closet before.
Step Two
After we took everything down, including the white rack shelves, we chose our paint color and started to paint the closet! This was a huge improvement since we both weren’t fans of the turquoise blue that was in there beforehand. We went with a plain white by Behr and ended up changing the paint after we painted two coats and it still wasn’t completely covering the old color.
As you can see, this was two coats of the Behr Paint & Primer in One so we switched to the same exact color but Behr Marquee. We used that for our guest bedroom too and it’s thicker but we love it. They guarantee one coat and it usually does the job! We let the paint dry and then measured the shelf sizing that we needed.
Step Three
After the paint was done, Alex measured the length and width of shelves that we needed to cut down to. We went with Birch Plywood 4/8 that is exactly 3/4″ thick and bought four pieces which made us eight shelves (we got two shelves out of one piece for our exact measurements). Alex luckily has a saw at home (here is the link for the exact one we have) and cut the wood. I know that Home Depot will cut wood to your exact measurements when you go and buy them!
Step Four
After the wood was cut, Alex sanded down all of the shelves so they were completely smooth and soft to the touch. This is definitely an important step since the wood splinters which then leads to splinters on you. He let me sand a few spots and I decided to let him handle this part, lol. Here is the link to our exact sander.
Step Five
After the sanding was complete, we brought the shelves up to make sure they fit into their slats perfectly before staining all of them. The one thing we didn’t consider was the door trim so we had to cut a few inches off. Wasn’t a big deal since we only completed two shelves at the time so we were glad we caught that before sanding every single one down! Once they were all the correct size, they were ready to be stained.
Step Six
We started staining our shelves and finished one side of each shelf that evening. We had to let it dry and flip it over a couple of hours later. We let that sit for a day and when we revisited the shelves, we knew we wanted a darker stain than the Honey Satin above. Alex already had the color “Dark Walnut” in the same stain (it was a premium stain, linked here for you) and once we did one coat of that – we achieved the color we had wanted! We love how the color came out and brought out the wood grain even more.
Once the wood was 100% dry, we added all of the shelves to the closet. I let the wood dry for about 48 hours before bringing it inside to be sure it was completely dry which was probably longer than needed but we didn’t mind. This part was so fun since it was all coming together finally!
Step Seven
Organize! I ordered a ton of my favorite baskets from The Container Store online when we decided to redo the closet. I’m glad I ordered them so fast since the shipping was delayed! I think they took about two weeks to arrive which was totally okay. Once they did, we really organized and had a bin for everything.
I ordered 12 of the large sized baskets for our towels, toilet paper, and paper towels. We like to keep a bit of a back-stock (love Costco!) when we can so I wanted the larger ones for that. We have other things like games, random home decor, humidifier, heating pads, etc. in the other baskets just to keep it neat and tidy. I also grabbed a medium bin for washcloths and other smaller items and then the small bins for candles and excess Tula products/skincare that I don’t keep in the bathroom.
We want to add bins to the bottom of the closet (large ones!) to replace the rubbermaid’s that are currently holding our extra blankets and sheets. We haven’t been able to find anything online so we’re waiting until we can roam the aisles of Home Goods again… dreaming of that day!
Here are some photos of the finished product below. We hung up the Swifter and our Bona cleaner by Command Hook Grips that are amazing! They’re under $9 and they keep things off of the ground which I love.
Before and Afters
Here are some before and afters of each side of the closet for you to see how much has really changed! It’s insane how crazy the difference is – we don’t even recognize the closet before!
