First I’ll say, we have very limited closet space in our 140-year-old home, which is why we went with a large dresser for the nursery. That being said, I knew I wanted to make the most of the small closet the nursery does have, and I just loved what Monika Hibbs’ did with her daugher’s nursery a few years ago, painting the inside of it pink. I used that as inspiration but of course wanted to make it a bit less pink, and a bit more boy – yes in the stereotyping blue/pink sense of the word. (Fellow feminists, please don’t judge.)
The closet really had nothing special going on. A poorly installed wire shelf that was barely hanging on. So first step was choosing the right color for the closet, then step two was ripping out that wire shelf.
The Before
So step one was choosing a paint color!
Dan and I went to Home Depot and got a few samples of moody, muted light blues… going off a few of the decorative items I’d already purchased for the space.
Turns out – they were all WAY too dark. I don’t have a ton of experience painting with color but lesson learned: always ask the shop to lighten the color you like by at least 75%.
We ended up going with Behr’s Norwester at 75% lighter. It’s honestly STILL darker than I would’ve liked but oh well! I think it turned out quite nice!
Then after exhaustively looking for shelving options and discovering closet shelving – and even just wall shelves – are quite the pretty penny, we ended up hiring our trusty handyman to cut and install super cheap wood and closet piping from Home Depot… this whole project ended up costing around $100 including his fee! The ONE floating shelf I was considering from RHbaby cost around that with tax and shipping and it wasn’t even the right size! So we were happy with the spend.
What’s nice is we technically have two rods installed but they can both easily be removed if needed. The thinking was, his clothes would just get bigger and probably hang over the lower rod. Turns out we now won’t be in this house long enough for that to happen but that was the idea!
The After
I ended up getting two styles of white and light tan baskets for the shelves (to coincide with the colors of the poles and shelves) and nice baby-sized wooden hangers from the Container Store! We’re using the bins to store extra bedding, blankets, and baby items we don’t need to use quite yet (bibs, a baby carrier he’s not big enough for yet, etc).
It came out perfect and is such a better use of storage space!
Ahem, “Turns out we now won’t be in this house long enough for that to happen”?? I hope this means exciting things on the house front 🙂
This closet turned out wonderful! I love the balance of color with the wood accents! Where did you get the white baskets from?!
I like the color you chose. I had no idea that you can ask the paint store to lighten a color. I have never painted anything before, but seeing as my husband and I just bought our first house we may be re-painting in the future.
How exciting!! I am dreaming of the day that we buy our own home…so Kudos! I’m sure it will be so much fun picking new colors to repaint!
I am designing our baby girls closet now – and am trying to figure out how much space between rods – may I ask how much space you have between the two? Thank you!!
The closet turned out perfect! Where are those baskets from??!!
I love it! Looks like DIY wins one more time! The shelves look so amazing and you can’t even tell they are not from a big name brand, which honestly, is my kind of tune. We don’t own our home yet but I can’t wait for the day that happens, so that I can get to do my own baby closet 🙂