Merry Elfa-mas To Me!

Back at Overlook, we were enormously spoiled with a cavernous walk-in closet complete with shelving units and lighting.  Here at 64 year old Grafton, our master bedroom closets are minuscule in comparison.  I've been able to make it work, but since we moved in, I've been dreaming about adding an Elfa storage system.  Since most of our readers are Michiganders, you may not be familiar with the heaven-on-earth that is the Container Store (sadly, it looks like the nearest store location is Chicago).  Just another reason to abandon the Mitten and join us here in NoVa (obvious hint-hint, Mom and Dad).  Once a year, Container Store has their 30% off Elfa Sale and I just so happened to have a bit o' cash in my pocket from a Christmas bonus and thought: 2012 is the year my dreams come true.

So, you can go online and enter the measurements of your space and the closet wizard will suggest some designs based on the info you provide.  That is what I did.  Here is what the wizard and I decided on:

It's pretty great because it breaks down every component of your design and you can make all sorts of adjustments and it'll give you the exact price, so there aren't any surprises at check-out.  Once you're done, you can submit your design to your nearest store and they'll put together all the pieces in a cart for easy and quick check-out!  Amazing!  I didn't quite get that at first, so I just printed out my design and brought it into the store and a helpful employee still pulled all the pieces whilst we browsed the store.

Back at home with all the parts, I had to pull out all my junk and then remove the existing shelf and bar... and patch up the wall where our demolition caused some minor damage.

Before Elfa.  The horror! 

My handsome assistant demo'ing the existing shelf brace.

Post-spackle.

The walls of my closet were pretty banged up from me repeatedly throwing my shoes in there.  I thought, why not paint in there?  We have bought paint for our master bathroom and bedroom (months and months ago, as usual), so I brought out the lighter shade designated for the bathroom and went to town on the closet.

Freshly painted!

I'm not sure if you can really get a feel of the color, but it's a soft gray that looks so much better than the flat, banged up white and infinitely better than the nasty old yellowed paper color of our bedroom walls.  I'm glad I love it since our bathroom will one day be that color.  FYI, it's Benjamin Moore's "Big Bend Beige" color matched to Behr's Premium Plus Ultra base.

Once the paint was dried, we installed the Elfa.  You can pay Container Store to install it for you, which would have cost us an additional $180, but we were able to do it in about 30 minutes... which half of that was peeling off all the stupid price tags and opening assorted packaging.  I finally got my Elfa and I love it.  I'm still working on complete organization, but here's a sorta-after for you:

Doesn't that look so much better already??  If you can't tell, there's a top shelf that runs the entire width of the closet which is currently empty.  One thing I'd note for women, buying a couple solid shelves might be better than the wire ones I went with.  I found some of my skinnier-heeled shoes have a hard time balancing on the wires, so we might return one or two for the solid shelves.  I'm just hoping one day when we're ready to leave Grafton, it might help someone realize how much you can shove in a small space and not be scared off by our tiny closets.  In the meantime, I love my newly organized closet and am slightly afraid of how happy organization makes me...