Extra Bedroom Closet Overhaul: Phase 3- Poles and Pole Holes

Remember the closet I took apart and now have to put back together?? Well, it needed poles. Enter wonky non-edited picture of my blank walled closet.

Ya'll all know how I like poles...you can read all about that here so......I am excited to tell you that the closet now has poles! What what! High-five self! So here's how that came into play. First, I bought some supplies. 

Now, I will be honest on the supplies...I had no clue what the pole hole was called. No, surprise, surprise "pole hole" is not a technical term. You know what I'm talkin' bout though, right? The little metal or wood holes that hold the closet poles (or as some most might call them closet rods) to the wall. So I did some digging on the internet and found out that Closet Rod Flanges is the "real" term for pole holes. Who knew!? (and if you already knew this...well, good for you. ha!) 

So I hunted around lowes.com and homedepot.com for (let me be proper) rods and flanges. I found some at both, but homedepot.com prices seem to beat lowes.com, so I bought them there. How nice is the buy online, pick up in store (or OOPUIS to the super cool peeps like me...lol) option!? LOVE IT! I don't have to walk around gathering my supplies, I can just order and pick up.

So here's what all I OOPUIS'ed:
- 1 six foot Closet Rod Pole in Brushed Nickel @ $19.96
- 2 sets of Closet Rod Flanges in Brushed Nickel @ $5.57 each
- 1 set of wall anchors to fit the screws that came with the Flanges

#1- Cut the pole

So if you look at my closet plan (also posted in Post 1 of this series) you'll see I needed 2 rods that were 29.5 inches long each. Since my closet was oddly sized, I had to buy a long pole and then cut to custom length ones rods out of it. We just measured the pole and then marked the spot to be cut with painters tape. My hubs then used the handsaw to cut it at that line. You could use your miter saw to do this if you have the right blade...but I was too cheap to buy a new blade just for this, so I used the cheapest saw I had on hand.

#2- Measure & Mark where the Flanges should go..then screw'em in.

I want the lowest closet rod to be around 41 inches off the ground and the higher one to be at least 82 inches off the ground. First, we measured 41 inches off the ground on one side. Then held one flange in place and marked the holes. Hubs then put anchors in the drywall for the screws. We then screwed in that flange to the wall. To mark the second flange, I taped a level to the pole and inserted it into the flange hole that was already attached to the wall. Then placed the other flange on the pole and moved it up and down the wall until the level said the pole was well....level. lol.

We then used a pencil and marked the appropriate holes on the wall. From there it was just a rinse and repeat....we put drywall anchors in the new marks and then screwed her or him it in. 

#3- Higher Pole

We followed the same strategy with the second and highest pole....only difference was I stood on a chair rather than the ground. ha! You thought it was gonna be some ground breaking new strategy...well, I thought my taping the level to the pole was pretty ground breaking myself.

So here's the closet in all it's poled glory.

Now, I've gotta get my tail in gear and finish this thing. We will have a guest in this room soon and there's lots more to do outside the closet.

To see previous Extra Bedroom Closet Overhaul posts click the links: 

Phase 1- the plan

Phase 2- the lights
Phase 3- the poles

Note: I was not given anything in this post. I purchased everything myself and was not compensated to post my opinions about it. I simply listed my supplies purchased with my own monies for the benefit of you, my wonderful reader friends.

Extra Bedroom Closet Overhaul: Phase 2- Let there Be Light!

At the very end of my Phase 1 post, I hinted that there might be some issues in my plan for overhauling the extra bedroom closet. The biggest issue was that there was not an overhead light in there....and no outlets to use to hang a pendant or anything.  See how dark it is in this picture I posted a few weeks ago:

I mean what's the point of having a walk-in closet if you walk into darkness. DUH! I would love to at some point have an electrician run a light in there if it can be done. There's a room over this one, so it could be a little tricky I'd think. I dunno...I'm obviously not an electrician, but it seems like it could get hairy. My dad suggested another solution. He suggested I look into motion sensor lighting kinda like outdoor flood lights. He sent me a link to these Mr. Beams from Amazon that get really good ratings.

They were only $19.99, motion sensored, and battery operated. Very cool....very very cool BUT for the OUTSIDE of a house. Not the ceiling of my closet. I mean that thing is CREEPY looking. If I opened the closet door and that thing spot lighted me, I woulda wished I had been wearin' a diaper. I mean not that I generally wish to wear diapers...I'm just sayin the alternative to cleaning up the mess I'd make...well lets just say that diapers would be better. So the search continued...for less alien-like lights and ones that could possibly be attached to the ceiling. I looked on Amazon for more Mr. Beam like lights and what do you know! Mr. Beams makes a ceiling light too! Check it out:

Normal looking- check

Ceiling Mounted- check

Battery Operated- check

Motion Sensored- check

So, I ordered two. I was gonna only order one for $19.99, but you get free shipping on amazon (I don't have prime....I'm too cheap) for orders over $25....so I just ordered two. After they arrived, I installed the batteries and then mounted them on the ceiling using these heavy duty command strips:

After seeing the brightness of them and how the light fell, we mounted both. I figured we could always pull one down since we were mounting them with command strips. Oh and as for the reason we didn't mount them using the included screws and such....well I have drilling-hole-commit-o-phobia. It's a real thing ya'll, look it up. Anyhow, mounting these puppies was easy, peasy with the command strips....once I we finagled the full size 8 foot ladder into the closet. Yes, I know I need a 4 foot ladder....I'm hoping this year's Black Friday Lowes or Home Depot will pull through for me and run one cheap. To determine where they went, we looked back at my original plan (see it HERE), took the length of the closet which was 78 inches, divided by 3 (since we we're mounting 2 lights), and got 26 inches. Then took the width of the closet which was 29.5 inches, divided by 2, and got a little less than 15 inches (ok, we eyeballed this one a little more...lol). So following the instructions of mounting things with command strips, we placed the brackets that hold the lights 26 inches from each side of the closet lengthwise (which meant they are also 26 inches from each other) and a little less than 15 inches from each side width-wise. Make sense? Here's a picture with them on where you can see each of the lights beams.

Made it a lot brighter didn't it!? It's not like having an electrically wired one, but it's not bad at all. It's a nice looking cheap solution, actually. One cool thing is since they are motion-sensored, all I have to do is slide the pocket door open and they turn on! No light switch needed. And since they are ceiling mounted, they look normal... here's a shot of them I took while laying down in the closet:

Oh, you noticed the weird little bracket thingy over the doorway? Yeah...I need to take that down....and paint under it. Rawr. That was for the light the previous owners had installed....it was a battery operated pull chain job. It looked atrocious...and was broke when we bought the house.

Now that it's brighter in there, Sophie likes it. I think she thinks it's her room now.

So now we have light....onto the next phase of the plan. Poles! And ya'll know I love poles!

To see previous Extra Bedroom Closet Overhaul posts click the links: 

Phase 1- the plan

Phase 2- the lights

Note: I was not given anything in this post. I purchased everything myself and was not compensated to post my opinions about it. The links to the products I used are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy something after clicking through my post, I may get a small smidge of Amazon credit....which will only encourage me to keep up the posts. Thanks!

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Extra Bedroom Closet Overhaul: Phase 1- Planning

All of the bedrooms in this house are proud owners of big...REALLY big walk-in closets. I'm not saying that they  are California Closets (are those still in style? I wouldn't know. I am totally not trendy. did they ever become affordable for the common man woman?) Either way, all bedrooms had these huge-mungo (yes, that is totally a word....it's my blog I say it is a word...thank you.) closets with wirey like interiors....all but the extra bedroom downstairs. Yes, it had the builder-ish wire junk, but it was not a walk-in. It was decently sized, but well...it wasn't doing it for me. I mean if you put clothes all the way back on the top and bottom hanging parts then an average sized person (this could be totally wrong...I just couldn't reach them and it's my house so I just consider me average..at 5 ft and 3.75 inches...yes the .75 makes a difference) couldn't reach them. Here's how the situation looked before we moved in:

There was another thing that bugged me. There was a piece of wood on the wall behind the wire closet system. Yes...wood. Wood wasn't used to build the closet system, but apparently was needed to support it when the wires ripped a hole in the wall. 

Well, the wood on the wall was the straw the broke the camels back (thats such an odd quote to me btw). I wanted that wood off the walls...and if the wood was coming off the walls that mean the closet system had to come down with it.....and it wasn't going back up if I could help it. So when we had the house painted (yes, I didn't DIY the paint on my house. Surprised!? Well don't be....it was pretty much not worth it because I have an amazing paint guy named Rony with an amazing paint crew and their prices cannot be beat...and they use QUALITY paint to boot.) anyhow when we had the house painted, we took it all down....and had them fill the hole left behind underneath the wood....and by this time we had had the downstairs bedrooms recarpeted too.So this is what it looked like:

Please pay no attention to the piece of trim in the floor. It's actually a piece of window cornice I stored in there temporarily. But thats how the closet looks these days...like an empty little mini room. And it has stayed that way for 6 months now.....so it was time for a plan of attack. I took the measurements of this room to decide if I could make it into a walk-in....and do it effectively still maximizing space. I think I can, I think I can (said the little engine that could). I then printed out a piece of graph paper from printablepaper.net   and started drawing out my plan. Here it is:

The big drawing on the left hand side is the "aerial" view of the closet...and then the A and B are as if you are standing in front of those sides of the closet. Where you see two lines that is a shelf and where you see a squiggly line that is a clothes bar. Clear as mud? 

I'll update you on this adventure as I go along. Anyone else planning any overhauls soon? Anyone see any flaws in my plan? (Hint: I think there is one...so I am already scheming on how to remedy it) Also, what material would you use for the shelves?

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