Some time ago, I needed to redo the closet in the master bedroom of my house. It was all original issue, complete with sagging particle board shelf and bent clothes rod. The rod, actually, was a track that had originally held hanger hangers. Those particular things I had only ever seen in hotel room closets, where you slip the hanger out of its hanger when you need to take something out of the closet. I think they do that in hotels so no one will steal the hangers. After all, what good is a hanger that needs a special rod? Well, they were also in every closet in this house. They must have been a wise choice in 1970. My bet, though, is that every hanger was broken within a few years.

Anyway, what was left in the closet was a bent hanger track that was supported in the middle by a bit of chain. The chain was wrapped around the rod and then bolted to the shelf above. Not much support, really, since the shelf itself was sagging almost two inches in the middle.
The best feature of the closet was the built-in chest of drawers. It was four drawers high but the drawers were only twenty inches wide. The closet itself was over eight feet long, so it looked a little out of place stuck in the corner. Some socks and t-shirts could be put in it, though. And the drawers were actually well-made. I don’t mean they had dovetail joinery or solid wood fronts. I mean they were properly manufactured out of cabinet grade plywood. They had not come apart after 40 years of use, unlike almost everything else in the house.

I thought a good place to look for something to replace all this vintage goodness was a big-box building supply store. They sell cabinets. That would save me time. So, off I went and had a look at all their ideas.

They have some good ideas. But they charge too much for them.

I really only wanted some shelves and rods for hangers. While I can see why some people prefer wire shelving, I’d rather have wood or even melamine. And the cabinets they sell at those stores are mediocre at best.

So, I settled on buying a few eight-foot long, sixteen-inch wide melamine shelves, complete with one finished edge. I discovered that three such shelves was actually cheaper than buying a full-sized sheet, for some bizarre reason. I also bought some closet rods.

It did not take long to make the closet how I wanted it. I reused the drawers that were already there. I put them on drawer slides and eventually painted the fronts. I had plans to make doors for the space above the drawers, but I never got around to doing that. Within a day or so, the entire thing was full of clothes and anything else that happened to be around, so practical concerns dismissed the urge to finish it fully.

In other words, it became too inconvenient to move stuff out of the way.

I disliked the layout of that closet almost immediately. But it has remained exactly like that for six years. I’m pretty sure some of the clothes I hung up the day the paint dried are still there, actually. I had some plans to do other things in there but I know I’ll never do them. If I do anything, it will undoubtedly involve ripping out what I already did. It’d be more fun that way, anyway.