The Finished Space

As a finishing touch to the room, I moved the bookshelf out into the hallway, which removed its dominating presence and really freed up the air in the room. Book went in there, and anything digital went into a small bookshelf in the same spot. I also got to put up my old poster.


And finally, the closet. Above, you can see the plain shelves, in their completed and unadorned state. Below, is how I actually have it now. T-shirts and clothing fill the top two large shelves, in a nifty display manner. The floorspace fits my bin and more, and the outer shelves are currently being used for holding random objects, and I plan on using them as a sort of display case for my work, someday. Overall, I think it really makes the room feel interesting, and already I have had many positive comments about the change it makes to the room! My space feels more personal, and much more organized.

Painting

I decided that the mounts were very abrasive in their natural particle board texture, so I hid them by simply painting them the same color as the wall.

When painted, and especially after they are covered with the shelves, the mounts blend in great! Much better than my other mounting option, actual store-bought right-angle mounts. And these are somewhat recycled!


As for the shelves, a high-quality spray paint turned out to be the best path for me to take. A shelf after one coat of paint! A second was applied later, and I used 4 cans of spray paint.
This image makes the edge look quite jagged, but that is actually post-sanding, and is very smooth. Smooth enough that I feel comfortable letting my nice suitcoats hang directly against it!

The colors turned out quite nice!

Shelf Mounting

Once the shelves were transported to my home, I prepared to mount them to the wall by pre-screwing screws into all the cutout slats I had taken from the excess board I had. (see below) The tool I used for the small cuts was not perfect, so the pieces didn't turn out perfect. As I plan to paint these wall-colored, however, they should blend in nicely.
Carefully, I measured a spot where each slat should go up from the bottom. It ended up being a large amount for the bottom shelf, (to account for a bin I need to store under it,) and then 9 inches up for each shelf after that. (plus the half-inch of actual shelf.)
I used a stud finer for some of the mounts, but most are screwed directly into the drywall. If I planned on holding anything extremely heavy on the shelves, I'd insist on screwing into a stud, but this worked great.


The unpainted/unsanded shelves being mounted:
and the prototype for the finished product! Each large shelf has 8 mounts, and each small shelf has 5. One mount was placed on top to sandwich the shelves and to kill any chance of verticle movement. They turned out quite sturdy!

Shelf Construction

I would have liked to have used all recycled materials for this project. Short of raiding a construction site, however, I was unable to find sheets large enough to work for my uses. In stead of this idea, A trip to Jerry's introduced me to quite cheap sheets of particle board. The sheets were 4 feet by 8 feet, and two sheets gave me room for four large shelves, (I only needed three) and four small shelves. (again, only 3 were needed, leaving room for error.)
After the harrowing journey home in a small pickup, The only tools I needed were my blueprints, a straightedge, a marker, and this lovely jigsaw, which cuts through particle board like butter:
Consulting my cardboard cutout (see below) and my precise computer blueprints, I sketched out the edge of each shelf.
Cutting with the jigsaw was very easy, and very simple.
The excess wood seen here was used for cutting into square supports, in an effort to make use of every piece. (see above)
And here we see the cutout topshelf, ready to be smoothed and sanded!

Closet Alteration

The first step to redesigning my space was to fix a nag I had. As mentioned below, my clothesline in my closet is way too low for my tall self. Raising it up a foot would leave space on the rack, and give enough space below for the large shelves to reach the top of the dresser and not make contact with hanging shirts.

Far too low.
Who thought a nose-high rack was a good idea?


Setting off to work, removed all the screws, and carefully moved everything up by 11 inches. The finished work


Not much of a looker, yet, but later I paint over the old pain strips with wall color, and it's a huge improvement over the lower hang. I am excited!

Before shots, the space at its worst.

For comparison, the room at its absolute worst. A slightly cleaner version is in the post "the Closet," but I feel these shots make the comparison to the above post "the finished space" much more amazing.