Late last year, one of my dreams came true when Joey built me a shoe closet. It’s one of my favorite parts of the house now and here’s how it came to be:

Like most older homes, Wolfgang Manor has some major quirks. There are four full-sized doors just in our small-ish bedroom alone. FOUR! When we moved in, two of those doors led to attic spaces, bare rafters and all. Joey transformed the larger of the two into an all-white art studio last year but that still left another free. I’d been wanting a designated place to store all my shoes because I ain’t gonna lie, I have a lot of them. They’d slowly started taking over my home office, filling up a book shelf and creeping across the floor. In my world, a cluttered space equals a cluttered mind and the shoes needed a new home.

The soon-to-be shoe closet was a dead space with exposed rafters, doing nothing but storing a pile of miscellaneous clutter. I wish we had some good ‘before’ photos because it was really dark and creepy. Since it was upstairs, it peaked with the angles of the roof and was an odd shape. Joey had to first frame and drywall the space, then tape, spackle and sand, then prime and paint. Once the space was complete, we found these great ornate, oversized brackets at Home Depot along with a slab of pine that Joey cut for the shelf and painted white.

All in all, the transformation cost only $150.00 at most from beginning to end, mostly because the labor was free (thanks, Joey!) and we had the flooring left over from his studio remodel. The back wall was wallpapered with a scrap of Cole & Son Woods, which we had left from our dining room.

Shoes have always been my ‘thing.’ I’m big on only collecting objects that I can use all the time. When I was really young, my mom had stilettos in every color of the rainbow (this was the mid-80s) and she’d pay me a few dollars every once in awhile to arrange them in her closet. I think even back then, I was doing it by color. As I got older, my first few retail jobs in college were at shoe stores. I guess I’ve always viewed footwear differently than most people. Shoes to me are like wearable art. What can I say? I love shoes.