building closet shelves
Not quite the before picture, but pretty close. We added the wood shelf support on the bottom and sides to hold the weight of the shelves and toys.
We survived for 6 1/2 years with no toy storage in my son’s room. Years of tripping of plush toys gave way to wheeling (I use a wheelchair) over or stepping onto a variety of plastic toys and Lego pieces. Enough was enough.
This is how we built custom shelves into a reach-in closet instead of buying something “offer the shelf” from a big box store. Overall it is a pretty easy and cheap solution and didn’t take a great deal of time to complete.
Compared to the other renovation projects we’ve done, this one was pretty easy. The closet already had a top shelf and a support board drilled into the studs under the closet rod hanger. From there, we just had to make a few additional decisions.
Note: We did look at some options like at the big box store, but because this closet was built in the 1960s, we couldn’t find anything that would quite fit. Wire shelving was not an option at all, since toys would be constantly slipping through the cracks. Also, I frankly don’t like the look of them. Any other higher ticket items were just not going to fit this space. So we opted to do-it-ourselves.
Some things we took into consideration:
Bins and bins and bins of toys.
How many shelves we wanted. We toyed with putting shelves all the up, or half up on one side. Right now, P, our son, doesn’t need a lot of space to hang clothes. However, knowing he may in the near future, I didn’t want to have another project a few years down the road, by needing to tear out the shelves we built. So we opted for two, knowing the floor itself would be a shelf on its own.
What types of bins would we put on them. I love those pretty cloth bins you see in stores, but for toys in a kid’s room, it’s not practical. Also, we want them to have lids and stack. So we went to Target and bought a variety of sizes of the same type of bin that would stack.
How high each shelf would be. Now that we knew how many shelves we wanted and what size bins we had, we measured the dimensions of the shelves around how high we wanted to stack the bins. After that, we added an inch to ensure the bins wouldn’t get stuck in there, once we built the shelves.
Shelf supports were added on all three sides of the closet.
Once you’ve determined the height of your shelves, you need to determine where the wall studs are so you can ensure your shelves don’t move once you’ve installed them. In a closet, because it is framed all around, it’s pretty easy to find the studs.
We put shelf support beams on all three sides of the closet for both shelves to ensure full support. We used a circular saw to makes the side cuts for length. These can be much thinner than our, we just don’t have the tools or space to do these long cuts. We decided it was easier and quicker this way and I didn’t have to call in a favor to borrow tools.
For center support we add a bracket in the middle under each shelf. These toy bins were heavy and even though we bought decent wood for the shelves, they could still bow over time under the weight.
We bought paintable wood for the shelves rather than something covered in laminate. My reasoning was that if P chips the paint over time, we can re-paint. If he chips the laminate, we have to buy a new shelf.
Center bracket in the stud to hold the weight and keep the shelves from bowing over time.
Honestly, the prep and measuring took the longest time of the whole project. Just going back and forth about what we wanted and what was going to work for P. over the longest period of time for P. In other words, ensuring this storage would last him through his teenage years, not just his “toy years”.
I’m not a huge fan of painting, but I wanted the closet to look finished. So I took an afternoon to prep, tape, and paint. The wall board and shelves sucked up paint, so I had to get two coats down. I think it looks great though. What do you think?
If you have questions on how we did it, please put them in the comments and I’ll happily respond.
