natasha's corner

There’s nothing quite like a commute home from work in the snow.

It started off with me slipping and sliding along the barely-cleaned sidewalks of Cambridge to get to my T stop. It’s really quite an adrenaline rush as you feel your legs slip in odd directions, anticipating the fall that is sure to follow, only to remain standing a moment later, with a false sense of security at having beaten the ice this time.

Later, having safely arrived at West Natick on the Commuter Rail, I was greeted with the beautiful sight of even more snow than in Cambridge. As I climbed over the mounds of snow piled up by the plows who don’t care about pedestrians, and as I tried (unsuccessfully) to avoid stepping in the deeper puddles of slush that accumulate on the sides of the road, I thought to myself, “Isn’t it great living in New England?”

When I finally waddled over to my car, I found that it was covered in a nice thick layer of pure white snow, waiting for me, challenging me, taunting me. After clearing most of the snow off the car and onto my clothes, I got into the warm car and started the final leg of my journey home.

Although I passed at least six plows along the way, the road was mostly still covered in snow. That’s understandable, of course, since it was only about 1-2″ on the ground and everyone knows that’s child’s play for your average Massachusetts driver. My Honda Accord took full advantage of the situation, sliding to the left and right on a whim, bouncing off of snow banks. What fun!

Finally, I arrived at home. Although I knew it was futile to begin with, I tried to drive up our long, fairly steep, unplowed driveway. I made it about half-way before the car started sliding backwards. Without being in Reverse. I accepted defeat, parked the car at the bottom of the driveway, and walked up the hill toward the house. I’m happy to report that I only almost fell twice. I consider that an accomplishment.

New England winter, I <3 you.

A couple weeks ago, we decided to remodel our master closet because the old one just wasn’t doing it for us. It had two high shelves that neither of us could reach easily and the hanger rod was totally warped from the weight of the clothes. So, we went to The Container Store and designed an Elfa closet for ourselves.

The unassembled Elfa closet parts.

The first thing we had to do to begin our remodeling was remove all the old closet shelving. It turned out that whoever put the closet together did a really crappy job. There were random boards nailed to the wall for support, there were plastic ties holding the shelves together, and there were screws and nails all over the walls. I got the impression that they put the closet together, it collapsed because it couldn’t handle the weight, and they patched it up as best they could (you know, instead of redoing it the right way).

The closet after we took out the old shelves and removed the support boards.

Close-up showing the condition of the walls.

The original plan was just to install the new closet stuff after removing the old parts. However, after we saw the condition of the walls, we decided to spackle and paint (thus turning this from a day-long project into a week-long one). We still had all the paint stuff left from when we painted the master bedroom and office before moving in, so all we needed to get was spackling materials and fresh paint.

Spackling helped a lot, and the paint made a huge difference! Since we were painting anyway, we decided to paint the walls the same color as the master bedroom rather than keeping them white.

The closet with freshly painted walls.

Once the paint was dry, we started installing the Elfa components. Almost immediately we ran into a problem: they had given us the wrong sized dry wall anchors. There are at least two different dry wall anchor sizes, depending on the thickness of your dry wall. Ours turned out to be 1″ thick, but the ones they gave us were for 1/2″ thick walls. It’s important to get the right sized anchors because all the weight rests on the top bar that you screw into the wall and if you’re installing on dry wall, you need to be careful that it doesn’t break from the weight. In our case, we didn’t hit any studs when installing the top bar, so we were especially concerned about having the right dry wall anchors. Luckily, exchanging the anchors just took a quick trip back to The Container Store (although we did have to pay for them since we didn’t bring back the other ones we had).

Top bar installed.

The remainder of the process was pretty straight-forward, except for a few minor problems:

First, we had some trouble getting the placement of the hanging standards (the vertical bars) right. We had one long shelf in the middle and short ones on the sides. When we placed the hanging standards for the long shelf, we guesstimated where the middle bar should go and figured it was “good enough”. Although the shelves fit fine, we ran into a problem when we installed the facia (that’s the wooden front on the shelves). The facia pieces all came in small sizes and to make them fit we had to take apart the big shelf and place the bar exactly in the middle.

So, if you’re ever installing an Elfa closet, make sure all your hanging standards are exactly 24″ apart, no matter how long your shelves are. It’ll save you the headache of fixing it later.

Hanging standards approximately in place.

Second, the instructions for installing the shelves were not clear enough. You have to put the back end of the shelf into the notches first, then push down in the middle.

Also, although the shelves will install on brackets spaced less than 24″ apart, there is only one right way to install them. You have to get the outsides completely inside the shelf brackets or none of the “decorative” pieces will fit correctly. This is also necessary if you have two shelves right next to each other, sharing one bracket.

All in all, installing the shelves was one of the hardest and most time consuming parts of the process. The three lines dedicated to this in the instruction booklet seems very inadequate.

Shelves installed.

Finally, the installation instructions make no mention of “niceties” like the top bar cover, the shelf bracket side covers, or the shelf liners (optional) that you need to install.

The top bar cover is basically a piece of plastic that you slide into the top bar to cover up the screws and make it look nicer. Make sure you install this before installing shelves! We didn’t realize we had to install it until after all the shelves were in place, and we had some high ones that were really hard to reach around.

The side covers for shelf brackets are also missing from the install guide. It’s not a big deal if you forget about these until the end, though, since they go on the outside.

The shelf liners are kind of a mystery. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to put them in before you put on the facia or after. We put them in last, but they basically just lie on top of the shelves and there is nothing holding them in place. I suspect that if you put them in before installing the facia, they would actually be held in place by the facia. Instructions would be really helpful here.

Despite these minor problems, the process was actually very easy to follow and rewarding to know that you did it yourself.

Empty closet with everything installed.

We are extremely happy with our new closet. It fits so much more than before and we can comfortably access everything we need. The wall color makes it look way better as well, and I’m glad we were forced to paint it. We also put in GE Reveal light bulbs, which provide a cleaner, more neutral light for the closet.

I never thought I’d get excited about a closet, but I love it!

Our new closet in use.

Need to pick up some more at the store.