Robed

Since we moved into this entirely cupboard-less house, we have had a serious shortage of storage. As in, the one and only built-in cupboard that we inherited happened to be the kind of disgusting linen cupboard that lost its life around the same time as the old bathroom did.

We managed to at least put a small bandaid on that problem for a little while by shelling out $60 for these three beautiful specimens to stuff our clothes into.

In what was probably one of my craziest ideas, I originally thought we would use the bones of those crummy old wardrobes to then build ourselves lovely floor-to-ceiling wardrobes along that wall of our master bedroom.

But fortunately I had a return to sanity and realised that those wardrobes belonged at the rubbish dump, and that if we want a nice, high quality finish and as little wasted space as possible, we should just build new built-in wardrobes from scratch.

The plan has always been to knock out the wall between the two bedrooms and to steal some space from the second bedroom for the actual master built-in wardrobe - meaning that the doors of the wardrobe would line up with what used to be the wall between the two bedrooms.

Enter the builders! Since most of the carpentry work was completed downstairs, they had to get out of the way of the plumber, electrician and plasterers so that we could continue making progress there. So, I moved them upstairs, to build me some new wardrobes!

Here are the two bedroom doorways. On the left is bedroom two, and the beginnings of the frame for the wardrobe. On the right is the master bedroom, with my temporary clothes rack squished against the window.

Here's a closer shot of the state of chaos that the master bedroom has now remained in for weeks. Everything is piled in that corner near the window, and that poor unfortunate temporary clothes rack ended up collapsing so that the top level of clothes was lying on the bed. I managed to sleep with them like that (and even changed the sheets a couple of times) for weeks. Weeks, I tell you!

Anyway, back to the beginning. Here's the frame being started in the second bedroom. The wall you see on the right is the one bordering the master bedroom, where eventually there will be doors opening onto the wardrobe.

 And here's the matching frame on the ceiling.

They managed to make fairly short work of removing all of the VJ boards that constituted the wall between the two bedrooms (fortunately they weren't structural), and I spent a few minutes dreaming about just kicking my brother out of the second bedroom and enjoying having a giant master suite.

Fortunately for him, I resisted that particular temptation. But we did have to spend one night with no wall between our rooms. That was fine until his alarm went off at some ridiculous hour the following morning.

The next day the carpenters were back, making short work of closing in the frame with pre-made VJ paneling.

And in virtually no time,there was a complete wall between the two bedrooms again!

So then they turned their attention to the master bedroom side.

And it too got sheets of VJ paneling installed on the inside. They even cut small little sections of spare VJs that we had lying around to fill in the area above the doors, so eventually it would look as if the original wall had never moved.

 And then the big doors went on! That was an exciting moment for me.

Although there wasn't much behind them yet!

It didn't take long for that to change, though. They installed shelving and rods, and I couldn't resist testing them out by hanging some clothes in there temporarily.

There's enough space for the hangers...

And it feels pretty spacious in there!

But because they weren't quite finished yet, and because I knew that I would need some incentive to actually paint the wardrobes inside and out, I regretfully removed all of my clothes again to their collapsing temporary rack, and refused to allow myself to use the wardrobe again until it was fully painted. Meanwhile, the builders cut down five extra doors so that we could use their small panel for the high section of cupboards...

And then they covered over all of the ugly door frame sections with architrave, inside and out. Although I only got pictures of out.

And here's where the wardrobes replaced the weatherboards in becoming the most torturous thing in my life. See all of the joins in the corners of the architraving, and all of those little black specks (i.e. nail holes) in the timber? Well they all needed to be puttied and sanded before painting, so that we could pretend they never existed.

And so I spent almost a full Saturday with putty and no-more-gaps all over my fingers, working away at covering up all of those holes and gaps. Inside and out. If you had told me years ago that I would voluntarily spend half my weekend contorted inside a cupboard, I would never have believed you. But there you have it. It happened!

 Until I was left with this work of art. Admire it, dammit!

And admire it some more! Look at all that putty. And imagine that sight repeated on the inside as well. Oh the horror.

But of course, as always seems to be the case with renovating, that was only the beginning! Then came the extra torture of applying three coats of paint to everything. The walls, the shelf supports, the puttied architraving, the door frames, the doors themselves, back front and sides! This night-time (and therefore not very nicely coloured) shot marks the momentous occasion when I could declare the entire thing undercoated.

And then came two coats of white high gloss on all of the shelf supports and architraves, and two coats of Dulux's Sandy Day half strength on the walls and doors. Sounds simple enough, right? But let me whinge for just one second. This painting took DAYS! As in, if I had done all of it all in one go, I would have been at it for more than 24 hours straight. Which is why I'm kind of glad that I forced myself to put up with the discomfort of sleeping in a bed half-covered by my incredibly heavy fallen-over clothes rack. Because without that incentive, I don't know if I would have had the strength to go on.

But now it's done. Big sigh of relief!

So now, at last, my full length clothes have a freshly painted place to hang...

And there's plenty of room for the double hanging as well!

One word? Proud. And I didn't even build the thing, I just painted it! Now I just have to find the time to actually take advantage of all of that beautiful storage space above the clothes and pack everything away neatly!