It’s time for another check-in in the master closet! In case you missed it, we made a double story space (that the previous owners used as a dining room) into our closet by adding a ceiling/floor to the room right off of our bedroom.

We loved our last Ikea Pax closet so much, we’re doing it again, except this time, we’re going allllll in on the customization. You can see our inspiration here, how we planned it here, and a big mirror update here.

And here’s how it looks and what we did this week:

This week, we made and installed bases for the wardrobes to raise them up. This will allow us to carry the 8″ baseboard we have around the rest of the room/house into the closet for a true built-in look.

Instead of the white cardboard, folded backs that come with the Ikea Pax system, we swapped in 1/4″ plywood backs (cut to size and nailed in like the other backs would). We will be painting the closets so we really wanted the backs to be seamless.

We also added the interior fittings so that we can start filling the holes that aren’t being used in preparation for paint. We’ll be making and adding drawer fronts, too. But I think we’ll paint the drawer fronts separately from spraying everything else.

Chris and I each designed our sides of the closet. Above is Chris’s side. He has 2 39″ sections and he opted for mostly drawers. In fact, you can see mine below I have 4 sections with the same amount of drawers as Chris and a lot more hanging space. I prefer to hang my jeans straight (to keep them as long as possible). The smaller section below will be for laundry and suitcase storage. It will be the only section with a full door. The drawers will have fronts but the hanging spaces we’ll leave open. However, the closet itself will have two pocket doors on it.

I used the wide lens below so you can see it better.

We still have a lot of trim work to do. Adding baseboards. Adding trim to all the fronts so it’s flush with the drawer fronts when we add those. Adding side panels. And trim to the tops of the cabinets so they extend to the ceiling. We were going to add crown molding, but decided to add just straight trim instead and chunky beams running the width of the room.

Here’s a little digital mock-up to give you an idea of what’s still to come…

Of course this is just a quick photoshop rendering, but the cabinetry will go all the way to the ceiling, there will be beams. In the recessed portion in the back of the space, we will be building floating shoe shelves (we’ll have it go to the ceiling) and everything painted the same color–Farrow and Ball Lamp Room Gray.

There will be a large pivoting mirror in front of the shoes. About 17″ in front so we can still reach back and grab what we want, or even pivot it if we want access to all of them. We commissioned Handmade Industries to manufacture the mirror of our dreams and I can’t wait to see it in person.

We’re sharing live closet updates on Instagram stories and I shared them all to a highlight in case you want to reference any part of the process!! We’ll see you over there! ;)