A Productive Weekend - Part One

The story of last weekend is way too much of a saga to share in one post, so this week we'll share one part at a time until it's complete. 

Part One: The Closet

Part Two: The Christmas Tree

Part Three: The Curtains

Part Four: The Bed Assembly

Part Five: Anything Else I Remember Later to Add

Part Six: The Light Fixture

To provide some context, the weekend started on Thursday and ended on Sunday, included two wonderful Christmas celebrations, and less than ten total hours of sleep. We're getting too old for this. Adding this whole weekends events to the Murtaugh list. 

Part One: The Closet

You heard the beginning of the closet journey back here, when we purchased the necessary wire shelving supplies for the organization of our closet. We continued the project on Thursday. It started out going smoothly enough, we marked and measured all of the back clips, using some interesting leveling techniques. 

Using my Chevron Art as a straight edge for leveling.

We moved on to drilling the holes, which Philip liked a little bit too much.

My husband loves drilling way more than he should, I actually bribed him with it a bit before this, reminding him how much he loves it because he had forgotten. It was quickly remembered.

Back clips up, we moved on to the end clips, which are mounted on the side walls to hold up the shelves. This is where we started to run into trouble. It seemed there were studs there - and all of the closet mounting hardware comes with the drywall anchors attached and aren't really designed for studs. 

After trying unsuccessfully to pre-drill, hammer in a big nail, etc. etc. Philip cut off the ends of the end clip anchors so that they wouldn't flare out when the nail was hammered in, since they'd be impeded by the stud. We still couldn't get it to work, the nails were not catching to the stud. Stores were closed by this time, so we went to Philip's parents to see if they had any longer nails, but not too long! We took a couple back, and still no luck. We decided to give up for the night. 

Philip cutting off the anchors at the end of the end clips, very innovative thinking - that failed. 

Now for something a little bit mushy, one thing that made me really happy that night was that most of the time this kind of stress would make us not so happy with each other, but we were able to turn the night around and still feel loving and good about how the day went. 

Thursday came to an end.

Friday, Philip's parents came home and so we had Philip's dad come over to help us finish up the closet, hoping he'd have an idea that we didn't. 

While he went to get some screws from his house that he thought might work, Philip somehow managed to make everything he tried the day before which failed, somehow succeed. This is just one of those mysteries, I don't know what to tell you that we did differently, somehow what didn't work Thursday just worked perfectly Friday. 

Our closet was then hung. Philip went on to add the support arms, hang the shelves (an 8 foot shelf and a lower 4 foot shelf), and I was able to put some clothes in it! We still have to put up the doors and I definitely need to figure out how to organize all of our clothes still, but our evening had its first success on day 2. 

One shelf up! One to go. 

We went on to stay up until 5 AM working on some of the other parts that I've yet to tell you. Stay tuned! Anyone else installed wire shelving? Had a crazy weekend? Answer the poll tonight so tomorrow we can share our favourite Christmas foods with you, including some foods of our own creation that we're planning to make this year. 

6th Time Is the Charm

Disclaimer: Be prepared for a really long post about wire shelving that is a bit low on pictures and a lot high on frustration and disappointment - just to get you through it, I promise it has a semi-happy ending!

Number 1

This Sunday we went to Home Depot with the purpose of buying some closet shelving for our new and improved Master Bedroom. Little did we know the adventure that was about to unfold.


You should first understand the closet organization shopping experience at a home improvement store, it involves a lot of signs, a lot of directions, and a lot of calculators. 

When we got to Home Depot for the first time (the title is a bit of a spoiler here), we had decided to go with the white wire mesh basic shelving and had begun loading it into our cart. Closet shelving seemed easy to us at the time and we knew basically what we wanted so just went for it. Our closet is 8' wide and about 2' deep, so our original thought was an 8' long wardrobe shelf at the top, a 4' long wardrobe shelf below to allow for some double hanging and some long hanging (I have a dress addiction), and we had also planned to put a narrow shelf at the top for additional storage. 

We started out loading up the shelves, and then we read some signs. They talked of C clips, Back Clips, End Clips, Shelf Supports, etc. Each of which had a different requirement such as use at the ends as well as every 36 inches, use every 40 inches as well as 2 inches from each end, use in between shelves if they will be holding twenty kittens while cooking cornish game hens and singing the theme song to "The Jetsons" - this is almost not an exaggeration. Every single different component was to be used at a different measurement, and came in a bag with a different number that didn't make sense. For example, shelf brackets only come in a bag of one bracket each, while c clips, which you only need a couple of, came in a bag of 20. Very puzzling. 

A list of the necessary hardware needed to mount our shelves.

Math was my favourite subject in high school (can't even explain that one - my favourite food is also broccoli...I'm unique), but somehow in a high stress home improvement nightmare, math can really cause me to become overwhelmed.

So anyway, we got our cart all loaded up and were ready to get out of there, when an employee at Home Depot stepped in to try and upsell us on the special shelves that you can add cool accessories to. We were pretty sure what we wanted, but being nice we didn't shut him down early enough which meant that we were still there when a nice couple walked by and awkwardly announced that Canadian Tire had a better deal and we should go there instead. The employee sort of awkwardly joked it off and we told him we'd shop around a little, so we unloaded our cart and moved on. 

Number 2

Off to Canadian Tire! We very quickly realized that they didn't have what we needed at all at Canadian Tire - don't know what that couple was thinking. One thing we did see there were some pre-made boxes of closets for certain sizes and so that added another factor into the equation - did we want to do it piece meal or buy a box that is already completed with all the hardware we need. More math! What was cheaper??

Number 3

Before heading home for the Grey Cup we figured we had time to stop at Rona just to make our home improvement Transcona tour complete. They had almost everything we needed but were missing one of the sizes of shelves that we wanted. We grabbed some free popcorn and headed back to Home Depot.

Number 4

We snuck the back way up the closet aisle to avoid our new "in training" friend John so that we could get in and out quickly and watch Toronto beat Calgary. We just wanted to see the price on the prepackaged closet kits there so that we could give it some more thought. The boxes cost around $200 so it was very close to the same price as the piece meal way of doing it. So confusing! I was very tempted, but the box didn't have the same amount of shelving we wanted and came with some components we didn't really need, like shoe shelves (which we keep in our front closet for the most part). 

Number 5

Yesterday, we went to Home Depot to get this all over and done with. They didn't have enough hardware (I believe the shelf supports were what they didn't have enough of) at the Regent Home Depot so we were headed to Polo Park. We got there and finally decided what we all wanted - after we got in a bit of a dispute and I had to return to the carpet section for some soothing once again. 

After all of this we decided it made sense to not put an additional shelf way above for extra storage as it would be awkward to get at or put anything sizable on, and we have plenty of storage in our house. It's hard to tell right now because we have stuff everywhere, but we will have a lot more room than we did in our condo once some more of our rooms are usable and things are put away. 

During this trip to Home Depot we finally calculated the difference in price between the box of prepackaged closet and the individually purchased components. With deciding against the top shelf, we would be saving over one hundred dollars and getting the same amount of shelving so it made a lot more sense for us. Definitely won't judge anyone who buys the box though, this experience made me hate closets forever.

We were about to leave when we realized that we weren't so sure we could fit the 8' length in our car. I feel like I can hear your audible groan through the computer as I write this. Somehow we didn't think of it before hand. We decided to go home and eat supper and then head out again with my father-in-law's truck.

Number 6

After filling up on some delicious tacos, we headed to the in-laws to pick up the truck. Little did we know there would be another obstacle, there is a storage box and hitch in the back of his truck so it wouldn't fit in there either. We measured our car and realized we could fit it in our Torrent if we put it in diagonally, so I stayed there and Philip headed out once again. 

A couple hours later and our closet shopping experience was complete, it only took 6 trips and a lot of angry discussions and tears, but we finally have shelves. Now just to install them without any issues. Knock on wood!

It wasn't nearly as easy as this guy makes it sound:

Has anyone else installed wire shelving in a closet recently? Any tips for us? Now just to get through this week, finish our bedrooms, and move in! The caulking is the death of me so wish me luck as I wrap that up and hopefully share about it soon. All of this work is putting us majorly behind on our Christmas shopping, fill in the poll and let us know how prepared you are for the upcoming holiday season!