Part of the “make house more comfortable” goal of 2009 was to come up with an adequate clothing storage solution for two people with one closet and no dresser. Our current house is modern with a capital M, and we’re trying to keep the bedroom pretty spare–no dresser at all. Everything goes in the closet, which meant that everything was everywhere. After years and years of chaotic rental closet adaptations, wobbly dressers, and nowhere to put shoes, we at last have a closet we can find our pants in (and not in a heap on a dusty floor).

The highlight of the Before is the duffel bag of shoes.

See?

Last weekend, while Ben was up in Seattle partying ambient-style (I think that means there was a lot of sitting around, adjusting spectacles, and drinking beer. Not sure.), I installed the closet.

First, why Elfa? I wanted a closet that I could move around the pieces to adapt to what we need as time goes on, so that ruled out built-ins. Since we were going with the wired shelving, our choices were 1) Elfa; 2) Closet Maid; 3) IKEA. I’ve had the Closet Maid shelving in rentals and disliked it; it felt cheap with rough ends, shelves that bowed, and pieces that didn’t hang together correctly. We visited the IKEA store a couple of times to survey the closet options, and just designing and getting the right pieces together seemed nightmarish. I didn’t want to have to engineer a closet–just install one. I also felt like going with IKEA was risky–you never know when they are going to decide to discontinue a product line because they can no longer manufacture it so cheaply.

We went with Elfa, which is the sole product set from a 60 year old Swedish company and sold exclusively through Container Store in the US. I designed the closet over the summer with their help, and they kept the plans on their computer. When we walked in to buy it, they pulled up my file, printed it out, and collected the items for us to pick up later. This will certainly appall the DIYers who would have wired together the shelves themselves after scavenging for wire over a three-year-period. I don’t have the patience for that–it was time for the closet to get done, I liked the solution, it was on sale, and I had a weekend to finish it.

Should you buy Elfa, do it on sale. Container Store has two sales a year–one at the end of summer and a bigger one in early February. The sale will help you save some serious money on the closet. The closet we installed is approximately $1500 before the sale without tax; we paid around $1200 during the sale after tax. Considering that we have no other clothing storage anywhere, I am comfortable with this. If it was the Elfa plus three dressers plus an armoire, I’d probably not have done it.

(Also: KEEP THE RECEIPT! You will almost certainly wind up with extra pieces you can return.)

Below is the process and some helpful tips not mentioned in the Elfa instruction booklet:

1. They tell you in the instructions as a “tip” to remove all the contents from your space. This is unhelpful. What they should tell you is to remove all the contents from your space the day before you want to install your new closet. While they briefly cover patching and repainting the walls, they don’t mention that this could take awhile if you had a traditional rod-and-shelf setup that leaves a number of holes where the brackets once were.

Empty the closet–they suggest using that garment rack you have. Piling on the bed/floor works just as well. Take out the previous closet hardware.

Get your patching & repainting tools together. This includes spackle, putty knife, sandpaper, paint brush, paint, drop cloth, and paint stirrers.

2. If you will have help during this process, make sure your helper is focused and not a distraction. Della, for example, was keen on the power tools and needed to be doing something else during this process.

3. Patch and repaint the walls. I used spackle that starts out pink and turns white as it dries.

I then sanded the area where they had painted around the brackets, as well as the now-dry spackle. The walls had been painted over the summer, so they didn’t need complete repainting, just a touch up.

This would also be the time to change your lighting. For example, I want to install a motion sensor in the closet, as it is one that frequently gets left on by accident. This would have been the time to do it (except that Ben had expressed interest in doing it himself).

4. Get your tools together. Elfa gives you a list. Additional suggestions include 1/8″ and 3/8″ drill bits (not just “drill bits” as it says in the instructions), masking tape, extra drill batteries, and a stud sensor.

And, you’re done!

Well, no. It took a few hours to get the top tracks installed. Because the top tracks in our closet were designed to be 79″ long and it was just me trying to hold them up, I had to:
- Level the top tracks and tape them to the wall at the right height
- Mark the two center holes
- Remove the tracks & tape
- Drill, put in drywall anchors, and screw the tracks in the center two holes
- Make sure the tracks were level and then mark the rest of the holes
- Unscrew the tracks and drill the rest of the holes, putting in drywall anchors in almost all the holes
- Screw the tracks back in for all the holes

What would have been easier would be to put the tape on the top track, poke through all the holes, and then put the tape on the wall. That didn’t occur to me until after I was done though.

The top tracks go up, the vertical hardware inserts at the center and then slides over, and all the individual pieces hook in to the slots. It was incredibly easy to install–I did it myself and was done with 99% of it by the end of the day.

Every time I walk into my organized closet with no clothes or shoes on the floor, I feel much better about having spent the money on this rather than a dresser and still having a messy closet. All that’s left is getting a new mirror to hang on the door, and a few more pairs of shoes to fill that empty shelf.