DIY - The Closet

Our walk-in closet has two sides (sort of). In the middle of the back wall is a narrow set of shelves, with two rods for hanging clothes set on either side, like so:

(as always, pictures can be clicked to view at full size)

When we moved in I got the right hand side, as evidenced by my sword and electric guitar (the box) sitting on the top shelf, while Liz got the left side. Not because she's shorter (which she is, but only by a couple of inches) but because the left side had two rods higher up, and as Liz has long dresses and skirts she needed the extra height. The lower rod on the left looks different from the two rods above it because it is; it's an expandable metal rod I installed when the two rods weren't enough for all of Liz's clothes.

For some time now Liz had been asking me if I could move her top rods up higher - to the same level as mine on the right - because her blouses and shirts were touching the bottom rod I'd installed, and because her dresses and skirts on the far left (already removed from the above picture) were sitting on the boxes we had on the floor of the closet and getting creased.

In my typical self-confident manner I looked at how the rods & shelves had been installed and said, "Sure, I can do that."

But it wasn't until this morning, when we removed most of the clothes from the closet and I got a really good look at the job ahead of me, that I wondered if I really could do it, because a few things concerned me.

The frame in the corner.
Could I take it out without destroying it. Could I get any of this apart intact? And if I did, what was the wall like underneath? Was it painted? Or had the shelves been installed before the painters came through? How were the shelves attached to the wall? Would I tear off chunks of dry wall when I pried them off?

There was only one way to find out :)

The first thing to come off was the left-most shelf and it came off in one piece, for the most part. The problem was the shelf had been secured to the frame by brad nails which rather than coming out with the shelf, tore through the flimsy particle board and remained embedded in the frame.
You can see several of the brads sticking up from the horizontal frame, as well as the damage rent upon the shelf by said brads. At least the damage was minimal and the shelf was definitely in reusable condition. That small vertical piece of wood with the unpainted patch at the bottom was next to come off.
It was attached to the wall by brads (in fact the entire shelf was held together by them) which this time I was happy to see came out with the piece of particle board, rather than tearing through and remaining in the wall, like the brad in the frame above it.

The corner frame was next, the one providing additional support to the shelves. I realized there was no way to remove it in one piece so it had to come apart in pieces. The frame behind it, the one supporting the first shelf I'd removed, also came out, and I finally got to see the condition of the wall behind it. It actually wasn't too bad. It was a little dirty but at least it was painted.
The last piece of frame came off equally easy and while many of the brads had torn through the two shelves, none of the brads remained in the wall or studs; they all came out with the frame.

And then we were halfway there.

I rebuilt the shelves in the reverse order, so the last piece of frame to come off was the first piece to go back on, this time several inches higher up the wall.
The second piece of frame is beneath the first, waiting its turn to be re-attached to the wall.

Along with the second frame I rebuilt the box frame in the corner. It didn't go together quite as well as it had been originally but it was good enough for government work.

Coincidentally I work for the government, but in a desk job. The marks on the wall below the frame show how high up it's been repositioned. With the frame in place the rest of the job was as easy-as-pie, in fact the only thing left to go back on was the shelves.

All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.
There's a few gaps where the boards don't quite fit together as snug as they could, but some spakfilla and a coat of paint should solve that problem.
Then there's a couple of holes that will need a lot of spakfilla. This one is the biggest.
The two smaller holes to the right are brads (I re-used everything, brads included) that I nailed through from the other side in order to help support the shelf. I hammered them in at an angle, but as they went in they flattened out and came through the bottom of the shelf. They're still supporting it but I'm inclined to get a narrow strip of wood and nail it in place beneath the shelf as I'm not terribly happy with that shelf being supported in that manner.

Overall though, the end result is not too bad.
I'm reasonably happy with it, but more importantly, the wife is, and that's almost more important than my happiness, because if the wife is happy I'm happy :)