Custom Wardrobe Unit

[Anonymous]

My wife and I are moving into a house that is wonderful except for the tiny closets. Does anyone have any experience with building a custom wardrobe unit? If so, who did you use? How much did it cost? Would you recommend them?

Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

California Closets are good but expensive. Container Store will plan out your closet for you but I believe you do the install yourself, and they're still not cheap. I think both do a very good job.

We actually ended up doing our closets ourselves with the closetmaid stuff from Home Depot. It was really not particularly hard and I am very happy with the results. We used the white wire shelving although I think they have nicer-looking stuff too. Basically you just screw these tall metal pieces to the studs and then the shelves and drawers and such just attach to them. The best thing is it's totally adjustable, so if you find you are keeping different stuff in your closets than you'd planned, it's extremely easy to change the configuration. I think you can even go online and plan out your closet before installing. Home Depot will cut the shelves to fit.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks, but I think you are talking about work inside of the closet. Our problem is that the closet is so small that there is not much that can be done about it, so we are looking to install a wall unit that will supplement the closet. Does California Closets do this too? Their website seems to be focused on work inside of existing closets.

[Anonymous]

We did an external wardrobe/closet in our master bedroom. SO GLAD we did it. It wasn't cheap. We got quotes from a number of places. California Closets was suprisingly very competative and we almost went with them.

We ended up using Built in Style and we were very pleased. They could start right away (which was partly why we went with them...I think they're quote was similar to California's). They were very professional.

The custom wardrobe was a $4,600. It takes up pretty much the whole wall in our average size room. We didn't do anything too fancy, but added a couple things like lighting.

We didn't do real wood. Alsmost nobody does. I was really hesitant to go with the fake stuff, but it really does look great. You're supposed to figure about double the cost for real wood.

The amount of shelving vs. drawers makes a big difference in price too.


Hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

PP again. I should also tell you that we had Built in Style re-configure my tiny walk in as well. That was much cheaper. The total package with my closet and the wardrobe for DH was like $5,500. If you're having them come out to do a wardrobe you should also look into having the existing closet worked on, depending on what shape it's in now. I can fit 3x the amount of stuff in there now and it wasn't as expensive to do.

[Anonymous]

Would a free standing structure work?

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for the recommendation. And yes, we are also looking at independent structures like armoire units. Having a hard time finding an armoire that is really intended to serve as a closet -- most seem to have very little (if any) space for hanging clothes.

[Anonymous]

If you're trying to do it on the cheap, Ikea has a good selection of free-standing wardrobes that essentially function as closets, and you can customize the inside for hanging, shelves, shoe storage, whatever. If you are already strapped by moving costs and don't have an extra $5K at the moment, that might be a good stopgap for a while until you are ready to go with the custom unit.

[Anonymous]

oP, we are in similar situation and looking at building a cedar closet in part of out storage room in the basement. I'm considering using a handyman to help build it.

[Anonymous]

A few years ago Bloomingdale's carried large mirrored closet-type wardrobes.

[Anonymous]

PP here, here's the wardrobe from Bloomies: http://www1.bloomingdales.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=457085&CategoryID=9497

[Anonymous]

I'm the pp that had a wardrobe done. The bloomies one is pretty sweet. Our custom one was the equivelant of 3 of those units, to put the price in perspective. However, our wardrobe stays with the house. If you go with something like the Bloomingdale's unit, you can always take it with you if you move, or move it to another room in the house if you ever want to. I don't know what kind of quality it is, and I imagine there are shipping costs, but it's a good option.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, to clarify: ours is equal to three of the DOUBLE units which run from 700ish to almost 1k.