While having an empty nest brings lots of changes, I’ve leaned that it comes with a few advantages as well. One of those is that we could put our plan to convert what had become a spare bedroom into an upstairs den into action. Gloria had a large bedroom and from the time we bought our house ten years ago, I knew that one day, her old room would become our sports & planes memorabilia room. We waited until she moved into her own place before we got started. It’s still a work in progress, but one of the best parts of the room is the closet conversion.
Closet Conversion-Organizing a Display Nook
The room had a standard double door closet with a white wire shelving unit inside. I had a vision of turning the space into a display area. Why have an unused closet just taking up space?
My husband and I are both avid football and baseball fans and over the years, we’ve collected a lot of memorabilia. This room is now home to that as well as my husband’s collection of mahogany airplanes. While the room is pretty large, it was clear that it wasn’t large enough to neatly house all the items that we wanted to display.
How We Did It
The solution was to convert the closet. We started by removing the doors and the tracks. Next, we removed the wire shelving. I repainted the trim white and painted the interior of the closet brown for contrast and to match the walls that we had repainted only a few years ago.
The only change I made to the walls was to change the light blue stripe to the same paint color as the closet interior.
After looking a lots of options, we decided the best look for what we wanted was to go with 9 x 11 inch wooden brackets from Lowes. I painted them white to match the shelves. We would use four brackets per shelf. One thing I’ve learned about my engineer husband is that when he builds something, he’s going to make sure it’s sturdy; there will be no sagging shelves here! He’s going to spend tons of time planning every little detail. Drives me nuts sometimes, but in the end, his planning always pays off!
I painted the unfinished brackets and shelves white using Valspar Ultra Semi Gloss Paint and Primer in One.
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We decided to use shelves that are 12″ deep and 1″ thick and cut them down to the appropriate length. In order to make them slide in easily, they were cut to provide a quarter inch gap to the wall on each end. While they were already white when purchased, they needed to be painted to get the bright white I wanted.
I cannot begin to count the number of times my husband measured and remeasured before he cut the shelves to size. It was great that he did because they fit just right.
Once everything was cut, the brackets were mounted. We made sure to give the shelves the height we wanted between each one. We didn’t want the same height between the shelves and we wanted a total of six shelves. Lots of measuring ensued!
This should hold most of his collectible planes, at least for now!
To give it a more finished look, my husband cut a piece of shelving to use as a front cover for the bottom shelf. He attached this using wooden dowels behind it. That wasn’t in our original plans, but it definitely adds to the overall look.
After all the brackets were mounted and the shelves in place, it was time to set the display up. It’s filled with model airplanes, a couple of special awards my husband has received, as well as some aeronautical books of his.
Closet Conversion-Organizing a Display Nook
The room is coming together, though there are still some changes in furniture I plan on making, but for now, I’m enjoying the new look it has with the closet conversion and that there is a designated display space for the airplane collection. I love that we found a way to make better use of space and his planes are all well organized.
What ideas have you had to convert unused space into a functional one?
Beverly shares easy, inexpensive craft tutorials, diy projects for the home, coastal decor projects, & thrift store find makeover projects all designed to help you create a beautiful home on a budget.
This is a great idea for object presentation! I love your plane collection. Just gorgeous. Thanks for sharing at Think and Make 🙂 Can’t wait t see more of your blog!
Thank you, Karisa. We were happy with how it turned out. My husband’s planes have their own place, so that makes me happy. I hope you’ll enjoy looking around the blog. And thank you so much for posting!
How wonderful to be able to transform this room, I am sure we will see more as you develop it. This project to display your treasures is an impressive conversion.
This is awesome, Beverly! What a great way to display cherished items!
Thank you, Gail! I was happy that my husband agreed to do most of the work for this! That made it easy for my idea to come to life!
Thanks, Millie! I love how it turned out and it gives a perfect spot for Dave’s planes. I’m happy to have given you an idea.
If I had an under-used closet, I would definitely do this, Beverly! I had to chuckle at your description of your husband making sure the shelves were sturdy; I have a similar story with a closet we turned into a library! 🙂 I admit I was mesmerized by those planes. Did your husband build those?
Over the years, I’ve learned to just sit back and let him do things like this his way. They always turn out just right. No,he doesn’t build the airplanes. They are models that we’ve bought at air shows or through some online stores. He’s an F-18 engineer, spending his time at work with planes, so he just likes to admire these!
Very clever way to organize! It looks fantastic! Wish I had nooks in every room.
Thanks, Robin! It was a good way to make use of unused space.
Wow that looks like a lot of look but it sure is worth it. Awesome job on the display case. I need to make something like that for my granddaughter collectibles.
It was definitely worth the work it took! Thank you, Darlene.