“Organize my office closet” has been on my to-do list for a long time. This week was the week.
I have some cheap Ikea standards and brackets (on the right) which absolutely had to go. They wobble and are a pain to deal with. And I needed shelving on the back. And the wrap-around top shelf and clothing rod weren’t helping matters.
The Ikea stuff came out easily enough (save for the drywall anchors… ugh). But the wrap around shelf was another story. It turned out it had been nailed in all the way around. And there were many coats of paint on the shelves so the nails were near impossible to find, let alone dig out. So I got out a prybar and started pulling the stuff down.
At one point, with a sickening ripping sound, it became clear that some of the drywall was coming along for the ride. It turns out not only was the shelving nailed to itself and the wall, it was also caulked and glued in place. And so a great deal of drywall came down with it. The horizontal stripe below is the totally unpainted drywall, with a scar on the left and all along the top from the caulking.
To make things more awesome, all this caulking, nailing, and gluing had been done on unsealed drywall so there was absolutely nothing to keep it from taking giant chunks out of my wall.
I got a self-adhesive mesh patch to go over the worst spot (shown above) and a big tub of joint compound. The first coat is drying now. In all honesty I’m not being a perfectionist about it – it’s a closet. I used a 8″ wide putty knife to smooth the edges of the layers, and only plan on sanding after the final layer. Most of the closet should be OK with two, except for the huge gash which will need at least 3.
I hadn’t originally intended to paint the closet, because it’s a closet, but now I’ve got to prime and paint at least the patches. And it’s a small enough room that I can probably handle painting the whole thing. And while I’m at it, I’ll change the color to something nice, like the blue we used in the guest room:
But seriously, who glues in shelves?