boys' closet ideas

Kids’ Closet Project

Hello! I’m Christina from No. 29 Design. Thank you so much to Roeshel for asking me to guest post. I’ve very honored since I’m still a newborn in blogland! I thought I’d share with you a project I’ve been working on and am happy to say it is done!

No. 29 Design
My boys closet got stripped of it doors a while back to make room for the Ikea Expedit I put inside. It has freed up the rest of the room to fit in two twin beds as well as plenty of play space. It stays organized and all those bins hold clothes and some toys. All in all it works great, except for the top. I can’t take the bar down which holds the clothes on either side. Seeing everything stored on the top shelf of the closet does not make me happy. I’d put more “stuff” but then I’d see that too, so I’m limiting my storage capability.
I’ve been looking for a way to cover all that up, as well as the perfect fabric to do it with. Here is what I ordered.
I decided against panels across the entire doorway for a couple reason. First of all I want the boys to be able to get to their clothes, books and toys easily. Second, I want to be able to access the sides of the closets. I have hooks in there where they hang their pajamas, and “previously worn but not yet dirty” clothing. The third reason for not putting panels across the entire closet is the fact that over the weekend my boys pulled down the curtains in the dining room. The 3 brackets snapped all at once. What I thought were metal brackets were actually plastic wrapped in foil! Ahhhh, life with boys!
So I decided on what could be called a valance. The valance would hang from cup hooks and curtain rings with clips since the closet is too wide for a tension rod and I wanted something simple and inexpensive.
I could go with a no sew method which I’ve used before, but I decided to take out the sewing machine and challenge myself a little. I measured the opening of the closet, 60 inches, and added 10 inches on either side so the valance would run all the way across the opening and beyond making 80 inches total. I would need to sew two pieces of fabric together since my fabric was only 54 inches wide.
I measured to get the correct height of the piece. I wanted it to hit the top of the Expedit. I actually took a pillowcase to do this and just kept adjusting where it was clipped until I got the right height. No rocket science here! I added a couple extra inches to allow for a seam on the top and bottom.
Once my fabric was cut and pinned I was ready to go. First I sewed the two outside edges of each piece. I then lined up the chevron stripe and pined the two pieces together. After it was all one piece, I rechecked my measurements for the height and sewed the top and bottom. Simple straight lines all around.
Here is my seam below. How did I do? Not bad for a beginner if I do say so myself!
The sewing was done so I headed upstairs and clipped the curtain rings on. I screwed the cup hooks in by matching up where the rings were on the valance.
Nine hooks later and this is what it looked like…

It took a lot of measuring and double checking, but I’m so happy to not have to have the random sleeping bag and box of clothing staring me in the face.I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and would love for you to visit No. 29 Design.

No. 29 Design

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