Spending quality time in the closet

When we bought our house last year, one of the things that clinched the deal for me was the spacious walk-in closet off the master bedroom.

With its sunny window and high ceilings, it had the potential to someday become just the closet/dressing room I'd always dreamed of. (Even better, I could have it all to myself, thanks to a second bedroom closet my husband could claim.)

Until that someday arrived, I thought I could live with the crudely made plywood fittings that occupied one lone wall of the space. But six months in, I'd had it.

Getting at my clothes required tangling with heavy sliding doors and drawers that were coming apart. Folded items disappeared into absurdly deep shelves. A single rod offered little space to hang garments, while a cavernous storage area above was out of reach.

It was time for a serious makeover. But where to start?

The options out there are overwhelming. Closets have become a $2.5 billion industry, according to the two-year-old Association of Closet and Storage Professionals, whose figures include laundry rooms, garages, and pantries, as well as clothes closets.

Full-service closet companies, which craft and install made-to-measure storage systems, now number more than 3,000 in the United States, says association president Mike Carson. Then there is the vast array of do-it-yourself options offered on the Internet and by retailers such as Lowe's, Home Depot, Ikea, and the Container Store.

Of the growing penchant for closets equipped with adjustable shelves and rods; specialized shoe, tie and jewelry storage; and tilt-out hampers, Carson, CEO of Closet Works in Chicago, says, "The whole idea is to create order so you can save time."

Of course, for some, a fabulously kitted-out closet is just the latest status symbol. Not uncommon in closets these days are fine furniture-grade wood veneers, granite-topped storage islands, chandeliers, and coffee makers.

"It used to be that the average closet was at most $1,500," says Carson. "Now, we have closet jobs that regularly range from $10,000 to $50,000."

With little more than $1,000 to spend, I was definitely not part of that trend. I didn't need a crystal chandelier, I just needed a way to stow my clothes that didn't make getting dressed an ordeal.

My first move was to set up free home visits with designers from two closet companies whose ads I'd clipped from local publications.

Closet & Storage Concepts. This West Berlin company sent a briskly efficient woman named Renee who was in and out in a cool 45 minutes. After noting my choices on finishes (standard white melamine with brushed chrome hardware), Renee measured my closet. That would have to be repeated once my husband and I gutted the room, repaired the walls, and repainted - few companies will remove old fixtures.

Next, she pawed at my clothes trying to determine how much space I needed for "double hang" (pants, skirts, blouses) and how much for "long hang" (dresses).

We conferred on drawers, deciding on four - two deep and two shallow - to tuck away jewelry and lingerie. (Later, I would decide to add a fifth.) Next, she wanted to know, did I have have a lot of belts? Bags? Hats? No to all three, but shoes were an issue, I confessed.

Renee showed me some shoe-storage options in the company catalog. "The tilted shelves, made especially for shoes, I don't recommend because they're fixed," she said. We decided on a couple of standard shelves and a shoe cubby designed for 20 pairs.

After mulling options for fitting my closet system around the room's old-fashioned cast-iron radiator and selling me on the necessity of a pull-out valet rod, Renee was off. Two weeks later, I got drawings and a quote in the mail. The price: $1,362.

Closets by Design. This Malvern firm sent a chatty woman named Tina, who spent nearly two hours measuring and sketching and came up with virtually the same closet design Renee did.

But, I discovered, this system would sit on the floor, instead of being mounted to the wall like the one Renee was selling. That meant the units would have to be notched to fit over my late-Victorian baseboards and trim. Not an option I was keen on. The price: $1,780.

Feeling a pang of conscience about spending more than $1,000 on a closet, I decided to check a few of the do-it-yourself options, online and otherwise, to see how much I could save.

Ikea's Stolmen storage system. With the catalog and a tape measure in hand, it took me more than an hour and much irritation to come up with a rough arrangement of shelves, drawers and clothes poles to fit the room. The price: $695. Cheaper, sure, but I didn't like the modern look of the pieces, and the limited sizes the units came in meant lots of wasted space.

ClosetMaid. The budget-priced wire shelving featured at www.closetmaid.com looked more suited to storing produce than clothes. For a $5 fee, I was supposed to get two designs, based on measurements I inputted on the tough-to-maneuver Web site.

I got one design, which disregarded the notes I'd made about my peculiarly configured closet, and I never figured out how to request the second variation. I also got a long list of the parts required, but no price. A trip to Home Depot with my shopping list proved fruitless because the part numbers there did not match those given by ClosetMaid - something the company had, indeed, disclosed on its Web site.

Price: impossible to determine, but likely to be less than $400 based on the prices of some already configured ClosetMaid "kits" for sale elsewhere on the Web.

Container Store. Much easier to use were the space-measuring tools at www.containerstore.com. The retailer sells Elfa brand closet fittings (metal brackets, wooden shelves, and wire drawers) and offers a free design service. I filled in a form with my measurements and answered questions about how many shoes I had, how I liked to store folded clothes, and how much space for long and short hang I needed.

After a phone call to verify my answers, a design was in my e-mail inbox in less than 48 hours. Unfortunately, the plan showed a whole wall of storage where my big window is. (It was becoming clear that online design services don't work very well for quirky spaces.) The price: a surprisingly steep $1,047.

EasyClosets.com. This Web site (www.easyclosets.com) also was a snap to work and offered wood systems much like the full-service closet companies'. You could fax a design and get lots of phone support to tweak it. The price: $977.

My sense was that for those truly handy with power tools, EasyClosets would be a good way to get a higher-end look for less. But for me, the roughly $300 more I would spend on a fully designed and installed system was a small price to pay to have someone do all the work for me.

I chose Closet & Storage Concepts, the West Berlin company. Installation took just a couple of hours. Later, I added a striped rug, billowing curtains, a painted blue chair, and a full-length mirror.

Now, everything, hanging or folded, has a place. Small items are corralled in fabric-lined wicker baskets, and out-of-season clothes are housed in colorful fabric bins. Two wicker hampers sort laundry.

Pretty and efficient, my dream closet helps me keep one part of my busy, sprawling life organized.

Still, it's got me thinking: A chandelier might not be such a bad idea after all.

Here's how to contact the closet companies our writer consulted:

Closets by Design, 3119 Phoenixville Pike, Unit III, Malvern; 610-644-4143; www.closetsbydesign.

com.

Closet & Storage Concepts, 436 Commerce Lane, Suite E, West Berlin, N.J.; 856-767-5700; www.closetandstorage

concepts.com.

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