DIY Closets

[theSchmett]

Happy new year everyone,

We are looking to redo - or rather, do - our closets. Its an older home with what at the time were probably very luxurious walk-in closets.

Besides reducing our stuff (which we're doing), we feel like something beyond the basic rod and shelf would be helpful.

The closets are deep enough to stand in, but not deep enough to walk around in. They have regular room-to-room doors.

DIY skills are moderate, although the less hassle the better.

Is there anything out there that is neat, real wood (or at least formaldehyde free plywood), and not too expensive?

I don't right now have the patience to design something, and start cutting and joining wood or installing drawers.

Any advice helpful and thanks!

[geekette]

Wood looks nice, but I prefer the ventilated shelving so we got a kit like this at Lowe's. The split with some long and some shorter areas makes it pretty flexible.  You can get fancy with drawers, but things get expensive fast.

[ArcticaMT6]

Happy new year everyone,

We are looking to redo - or rather, do - our closets. Its an older home with what at the time were probably very luxurious walk-in closets.

Besides reducing our stuff (which we're doing), we feel like something beyond the basic rod and shelf would be helpful.

The closets are deep enough to stand in, but not deep enough to walk around in. They have regular room-to-room doors.

DIY skills are moderate, although the less hassle the better.

Is there anything out there that is neat, real wood (or at least formaldehyde free plywood), and not too expensive?

I don't right now have the patience to design something, and start cutting and joining wood or installing drawers.

Any advice helpful and thanks!

Are you looking for something to just install, or how-to's on building them yourself?

[Rural]

My husband made me* an incredible walk-in out of wood; the hanging bars are heavy conduit run straight through the stained 2x4 supports, so I could hang anything in there and not worry about weight. The conduit also allowed for great length without high cost. The rods are twelve feet and ran us under $20 each (shelving board, now that costs more, but we did the whole 6x12 space for ~$250).

It was a major DIY, though.

* His clothes are in there, too, but I'm well aware that would have just stacked laundry baskets in there for years -- the closet is for me.

[Spork]

I built mine out of 1/2 inch paint grade plywood and edged the noses with a hardwood edging.    I made one large built-in shelving unit in one corner and a small built-in diagonally across.  Wrapped the entire room in shelving at about 4ft high and again at about 8 ft high.  I forget the actual cost, but a nice grade 1/2 ply sheet is around $50 a sheet around here.  Most of the cost was the wood itself. 

A lot of what you do depends on the size/shape of the room and the limits of your imagination.

[ArcticaMT6]

You can build your own fairly simply, using only a circular saw, drill, clamps, a hammer, a GOOD square (check it for square. Expensive squares are not necessarily actually square) and straight edges.

As was said, good plywood is not cheap. I wouldn't consider using anything other than the highest quality plywood that Home Depot/Lowes sells. That will run you $40-50/sheet and still has occasional voids in the plywood. Plywood at specialty lumber stores is better, but more expensive at around $70-80/sheet. The flip side is, it's not the Ikea crap that will fall apart if you look at it wrong.

While I personally detest them, pocket holes can be useful in this case, provided you aren't severely loading the joints. If you plan on there being a lot of weight, you will need another joint type that cannot be cut with just a circular saw and a drill.

Should you decide to build, you will also probably want some sort of edging for the plywood since ply edging is generally ugly to look at. They make iron on veneers for that.

For cutting plywood, you want a brand new saw blade, with as many teeth as you can get for the size blade you need. This will lead to the least amount of tear out. Avoid the cheap brand blades. I personally like Freud Diablo blades (sold at Home Depot, blades are red).

You are going to want to drill evenly spaced holes for adjustable shelves. Most shelf pins are 5mm in diameter, which requires a 5mm drill bit. Those are not easy to come by in stores. You can either order a 5mm drill bit, or order 1/4" shelf pins. I chose the latter. To space the holes, rather than buying a shelf pin jig, I just used some pegboard that I had as a guide. Pegboard typically has 1/4" holes in it, so it makes a good guide for drilling 1/4" shelf pin holes. Rather than an entire vertical row like the particle board crap has, I did 5 holes vertically for each shelf, placing the middle ones such that there's an even height between all shelves.

Other tools will make your life easier, but are not strictly necessary. Things like a table saw, air compressor and brad nail gun, drill press, etc.

Here's a built-in entryway system I'm currently finishing up for a friend. It's 3/4" ply from Home Depot, and solid Walnut shelving:

This photo is just sort of getting a general feel for everything, hence the doors/shelves not sitting quite right:



And what the shelves look like after finish and cases look like with paint

[Rural]

At that price for plywood, I'd go with shelving board myself. A little sanding and staining and done. Two lengths of 1x10 make a nice wide shelf with no worries about unfinished edges or separating layers if there are spills or other water problems someday, and less worry about sagging than plywood, even the good stuff.

[ArcticaMT6]

At that price for plywood, I'd go with shelving board myself. A little sanding and staining and done. Two lengths of 1x10 make a nice wide shelf with no worries about unfinished edges or separating layers if there are spills or other water problems someday, and less worry about sagging than plywood, even the good stuff.

In this case, the 3/4" Plywood is cheaper. A nominal 1x10 is 3/4" thick by 9 1/4" wide. So, that means you get 5 of those out of 1 sheet of plywood. Typically, plywood here is about $40-48 depending on the outer veneer at Home Depot. A pine 1x10 is $14, and you need 5 of them to get the same amount of material.

In regards to the sagging, standard fir plywood has the same shelf weight limit as pine. The info in my book calls for 11" wide shelves, but, they both will hold approximately 33lbs/ft over a 2 ft span. This is assuming you want a deflection of less than 0.02in/ft (width won't help much in reducing deflection, so the 11" wide figure they are using isn't an issue). The eye can typically see sagging of about 1/32" per foot, which is 0.03in/ft.

Should you want more weight capacity than that, you can add a 1x2 to the front of either shelf, which will increase your amount per shelf to 76lbs/ft for a 2ft span.

MDF is the worst, by the way, at only 9lbs/ft. I don't have a figure for particleboard, but that is why you see the cheap stuff you buy at ikea/target sag all the time.




NOTE: I'm referencing Fine Woodworking's Building Furniture book for anyone who wants to verify for themselves.

[Rural]

At that price for plywood, I'd go with shelving board myself. A little sanding and staining and done. Two lengths of 1x10 make a nice wide shelf with no worries about unfinished edges or separating layers if there are spills or other water problems someday, and less worry about sagging than plywood, even the good stuff.

In this case, the 3/4" Plywood is cheaper. A nominal 1x10 is 3/4" thick by 9 1/4" wide. So, that means you get 5 of those out of 1 sheet of plywood. Typically, plywood here is about $40-48 depending on the outer veneer at Home Depot. A pine 1x10 is $14, and you need 5 of them to get the same amount of material.

In regards to the sagging, standard fir plywood has the same shelf weight limit as pine. The info in my book calls for 11" wide shelves, but, they both will hold approximately 33lbs/ft over a 2 ft span. This is assuming you want a deflection of less than 0.02in/ft (width won't help much in reducing deflection, so the 11" wide figure they are using isn't an issue). The eye can typically see sagging of about 1/32" per foot, which is 0.03in/ft.

Should you want more weight capacity than that, you can add a 1x2 to the front of either shelf, which will increase your amount per shelf to 76lbs/ft for a 2ft span.

Fair enough, as far as sagging goes, and I'm sure your source is right. But there are still issues of the work involved to make the plywood look (more) like the real thing, the problem of splinters if you use the shelves for clothing, the risk of delamination if ever there's water in there (which would mean other problems, too, I know), and the fact that it just won't ever look as good -- it'll have to be painted, not stained. I don't recall what we paid for our shelving board, but I'd make the same choice again.

[ArcticaMT6]

At that price for plywood, I'd go with shelving board myself. A little sanding and staining and done. Two lengths of 1x10 make a nice wide shelf with no worries about unfinished edges or separating layers if there are spills or other water problems someday, and less worry about sagging than plywood, even the good stuff.

In this case, the 3/4" Plywood is cheaper. A nominal 1x10 is 3/4" thick by 9 1/4" wide. So, that means you get 5 of those out of 1 sheet of plywood. Typically, plywood here is about $40-48 depending on the outer veneer at Home Depot. A pine 1x10 is $14, and you need 5 of them to get the same amount of material.

In regards to the sagging, standard fir plywood has the same shelf weight limit as pine. The info in my book calls for 11" wide shelves, but, they both will hold approximately 33lbs/ft over a 2 ft span. This is assuming you want a deflection of less than 0.02in/ft (width won't help much in reducing deflection, so the 11" wide figure they are using isn't an issue). The eye can typically see sagging of about 1/32" per foot, which is 0.03in/ft.

Should you want more weight capacity than that, you can add a 1x2 to the front of either shelf, which will increase your amount per shelf to 76lbs/ft for a 2ft span.

Fair enough, as far as sagging goes, and I'm sure your source is right. But there are still issues of the work involved to make the plywood look (more) like the real thing, the problem of splinters if you use the shelves for clothing, the risk of delamination if ever there's water in there (which would mean other problems, too, I know), and the fact that it just won't ever look as good -- it'll have to be painted, not stained. I don't recall what we paid for our shelving board, but I'd make the same choice again.

Promise I'm not starting an internet argument over this, just trying to correct some things...

Not necessarily.

Yes, you will need to add edging to plywood, which I agree is more work. You can either get iron-on veneer, or add wood edging, depending on your toolset.

The risk of delamination really isn't a major problem. Plywood doesn't have a huge problem with delamination from moisture, unlike MDF and Particleboard. If it gets absolutely soaked, then yes it will. But at that point, you will need to replace the drywall, flooring, and everything else as well. There's a reason why Plywood is used more in kitchen/bath cabinets than other sheet goods.

For splinters, I'm not really sure where that is coming from. The ply I buy at HD doesn't splinter. They offer Maple, Birch, Oak, and Sandeply (not sure what species this is, but it's a bit too soft of wood). This is plywood core with hardwood outer facing veneer. It stains and finishes like real wood. If you want the wood look, you could even go get specialty plywood like Cherry, Walnut, etc for even more. That is what I will be doing for my closets and eventually my kitchen.

You can even buy plywood pre-finished so that all you have to do is cut, install, and apply edging.

But, it's up to personal preferences, really. I'm willing to spend more money than most on this forum on things like this.

[theSchmett]

I'm really looking for something kit-like.

No energy to design, cut, or join pieces of wood.

So the DIY style I'm looking for is more on the level of "I'm not hiring someone else to install this kit".

I'm a master assembler of kits and handy with a drill, and that's about the level of involvement my brain can afford.

Thanks for the first comment about the Lowe kit.

And BTW all the pix here are AWESOME, I wish I had the brainwidth (brains+bandwidth) to tackle something like that.

[ArcticaMT6]

Lowes currently has their 8ft Allen+Roth kits on sale. It's $289 right now.

Alternatively, Ikea. I give Ikea a lot of shit, but it is easily customizable if you are reasonably handy, and isn't overpriced like at furniture stores for the same fake wood stuff.