Two Weeks....

[Walter has missed a meeting with the permit man, who got steamed and left]
Curly: If he ever does come back, you call me and we'll finish the job.
Walter: When I do get the permits, how long will the job take?
Curly: Two weeks.
Walter: Two weeks? Two weeks?
Curly: You sound like a parakeet there. "Two weeks! Two weeks!"
Walter: Well, two weeks. It- it's amazing.
Curly: Amazing nothing. It'll be a regular miracle.

When we bought our house it never really occured to me that for the size of the house, 3200 sq ft that the rather large master bedroom should have a larger walk in closet....I think mostly this was based on my recent years spent living the "single" married life while my husband, "Walter" was off fighting a war for five or six years.....all my clothes were in the bedroom closets and his, well they were kind of everywhere they would fit, hall closet, kid's closets...even the garage...yes I had banished his dresser to the garage, formerly only reserved for his "Army Gear", his now very UN-ARMY Gear was residing there as well....I mean really, was there a point for it to be in the house if he was not there? Yeah, that was what I thought too!

So after we had moved in and I realized that not only was the closet too small for my clothing, I had to take over all our dressers as well....and poor Walter was left to share our son's closet and, yep, you guessed it, he got the dresser in the garage again.... Now I really felt horrible about this, what man should have to live out of his garage, well, what one who hasn't managed to land himself there of his own free actions anyway.....and so began the drafting of the "Wall Unit" for our bedroom....

It really was just an idea, after I had laid it out on my handy, dandy graph paper (stolen from one of our children), drawn to scale, I sat down and determined that it would run me upwards of about $2000.00 to build it the way I wanted....eh, nice idea, not going to happen.....then I could not find a shoe one day and began researching the closet idea on the internet and guess what, you can order them to fit, just put part A into part B, screw part W in with a crescent wrench and wallah, you spent $1500.00 to screw it up.....but it sure was pretty to look at in the picture...you could also hire someone and pay them $500.00 to install it, and here we were back at $2000.00.....and I just could not see spending it for a few drawers and some extra shelves....

Then one Saturday last July I asked my husband to go to a yard sale with me....it was in the historic part of our city and I love the old houses there and mostly the things sold are worth quite a bit......I left with a beautiful pie safe, a great blanket basket and some very beautiful material....Walter bought cabinets..... closet cabinets..... Wall Closet Cabinets...... the family had enlarged their daughter's bathroom and had taken the closet space to do it....the cabinets were perfect for what I had designed....and thus began my closet project..... It was going to take me 2 weeks.....I was sure of it....I mean, how bloody hard could it be? I now know why people use pre-hung doors instead of trying to hang them yourself....it is not an easy feat to accomplish!

During the intense portion of the work, I had a paint sprayer explode on me, leaving my driveway and fence quite a nice shade of white....and I, well......I looked like Casper....I blew up a table saw (my poor craftsman) which almost caught on fire, thank God for Ice Tea, it puts out fire by the way..... I cut myself on more things then I can count, broke several drill bits, cracked the glass handles because I knew that the screw would turn one more time and it did....but the glass knob did not....dropped a door and those suckers are thin....put a hole right through it....I measured 3 times, cut once, but even that did not assure me that the walls were plumb and the slab under the flooring was level.....cause I used more shims then screws!

They are beautiful, they are 16 feet across the wall, two end sections are shelving..... 48 inches of shelves on one side and the other 36 inch shelves and a shoe rack, the center part had an opening 24x32 at the top, with a shelf in the center and there are 7 drawers below it.....in between each end and the center there is about a 32 inch open portion where I placed the rods for hanging clothing....one is double the other single for longer items. I put doors across the shelving and open spaces and modified an "ebay" find to fit the open space above the drawers...I placed the cabinets so that the faces were 30 inches out giving me additional storage behind them.....

I am very proud of myself.....but well.....

They are still not done, its been over 9 months since I began.....at night I stare at them and try to figure out my next move...all that is left is the mounting of the 1x12x8 times 2 above them and then the crown molding, but something just seems off....and I can't quite put my finger on it yet...I did install the mounting 2x4's above them for the front....but to move forward with it seems premature...

My husband asked me recently when I was going to finish "THAT" project....my answer

"TWO WEEKS, WALTER, TWO WEEKS!"

")