hey guys it's carrie from lovely etc and today i'm going to show you how to make a pretty simple
diy closet organizer i just finished making this closet organizer for our little tiny master closet
and i'm so excited about how clean and simple it is and how much more organized our little tiny
closet is going to be the thing that is great about this closet organizer is you don't have
to buy any special closet organizing systems all you need is some inexpensive wood and a couple of
basic tools and you can make your closet organizer fit your closet exactly and make it fit the things
that you need to put in your closet exactly so let me show you how to do it here's what our closet
looked like before there were basically clothes and shoes everywhere and i know that with this
new diy closet organizer it's going to look a lot better but more importantly it's going to be way
easier to find things that we need okay as you can see i have already done a total makeover on
my sliding doors so no more ugly sliding doors now they are beautiful and they open easily and
i love it i've also taken all of our stuff out of the closet so now i'm ready to do some demo
i took out all the old shelves and closet bar and gave everything a fresh coat of white paint
so after thinking about what exactly we needed to store in our closet and how to make the best
use of the space i went on pinterest and just looked at a whole bunch of different closet
configurations and different types of organizers and shelves and kind of came up with a loose
plan of what i want to do in our closet and now i'm going to use painters tape to lay out the
design to make sure it's really going to work and figure out the exact measurements i need to use
and here's my design i'm going to have a shelf at the top a hanging bar on each side and then
shelves going down the middle and room for shoes at the bottom and this is what i'm
going to be using to make my closet organizer these are 12 inch wide mdf boards they're eight
feet long and i really like using mdf for making shelves because it's really straight it's strong
it holds up well it has a really smooth surface and for a project like this i'm gonna be painting
i don't need really nice wood grain so i really don't want to pay extra to get it so i'm going to
be using these boards i'm going to cut them to size and then at the end i'm going to add some
real wood as a facing just to make it look extra nice and custom but first i've got to cut my mdf
okay so first i am putting together the middle shelf section of my closet organizer i've cut
the two vertical side boards and also the shelves that go in the middle here
and i have added pocket holes to the bottom of these shelves now i am going to attach
these first to one side and then the other and then i will set my middle section in place
to build the middle section i set one of the tall sides down flat on the ground and then attached
each of the shelves to it with pocket screws then i laid the second tall side flat on the ground
flipped the shelves over on top of it and attached them to that second side with pocket screws and
then i could lift the whole thing into place into the middle of the closet where it's going to be
then started working on my shoe shelves for the wall side of the bottom shelf i attached a small
board directly to the wall because the baseboards were in the way but all of the other shelves i
simply cut supports from my mdf then i set the shelf board in place and used my nail gun to
nail it onto the support so it would stay where it needs to be
on the other side of the closet i made these shoe cubbies to keep smaller pairs
of shoes and sandals better contained and i made them basically the same way
i attached a piece of wood to the wall to support the bottom shelf
and then put the shelf into place the only real difference is i added the dividers between the
cubbies and then used my nail gun to attach the shelf to each divider to help keep them in place
then i moved my top shelf into place and added a board onto each end wall to act as a shelf support
now the basic shape is done time to make it look good
i went ahead and painted the inside of my shelves and especially down in the little shoe cubbies
just because it's a lot easier to paint before you add on the facing to the front so now i'm ready to
add these 1x2 boards to the fronts of all of my shelves it just makes it look a lot nicer and
more substantial and it doesn't cost very much these boards are only a few dollars i'm using
pine i've used poplar before either one works great just make sure you find really
straight boards adding this thicker trim is super easy to do and it makes such a huge difference
when you're attaching the trim along the horizontal shelves just make sure that you
align the top of the trim with the shelf board so that it's not blocking any of the shelf and
for the little shoe cubbies i found it better to use one by one boards instead of one by twos
all the wood facing is on now and it makes such a difference in how
nice and substantial and thick and really just expensive these really simple wood shelves look
i have caulked and used wood filler and now i'm going to finish up the painting i'm painting my
shelves with my favorite combo of a small foam paint roller and a purdy angle paint brush
all right the painting's done i have hung the two closet bars for the hanging clothes
and i'm so excited about how my diy closet organizer has turned out and now i cannot
wait to put everything in it and get all of our clothes and shoes off of our bedroom floor
and here's our closet all loaded up if you're wondering this is not every single thing that
was in the closet previously because we did take this chance to clean out a bunch of stuff that
probably should have gone a long time ago but this is most of the things that were there and
all the things that we need and i'm so happy with how nice and organized everything looks
and how easy it is to find what we need i have more detailed instructions and all of
the measurements you need for this project at my website lovelyetc.com and i will leave a
link for that and if you haven't yet i'd love for you to subscribe to my channel lovely etc
where i share lots of inexpensive diy projects to create a home that you love on a budget