No Closet Solution for Kid's Room

In designing our son's nursery, I had to work around the huge obstacle of there not being a closet in his room. As we live in a charming 1920's home, this dilemma is unfortunately very common. Our "master" bedroom doesn't even have a closet, so we have to use the one in the hallway. Not the most convenient, but I suppose that's the trade off for charm. After maybe a second of consideration, it was evident that there was no way we could fit another person's clothes in there, especially little tiny ones that would only get swallowed by our abundance of fabrics. So, Solution: Turn a bookshelf into a closet!

BEFORE:

AFTER: 

Again, by using the oh-so-fantastic Craigslist, I found an old mission-style bookshelf for only $50. I wanted the piece to really have life, so I scoured the internet and stores to try to find vintage wall paper that I could use to line the back of the piece to give it a pop. This search soon became a mission. First, wallpaper is extremely expensive when looking at buying rolls. I looked at Goodwill to try to find a discounted roll but had no luck. I only needed about 2 1/2 yards, so buying a $40-$100 roll was ridiculous. Luckily, I found a vendor on Etsy.com that actually sells vintage wall paper by the yard. The one I chose for this piece, the orange fern print from the '60s, was only $3/yard....much better. After choosing the wallpaper, the only things left to pick out were the paint color, dowel and metal pole supports. If you are using leftover paint for this project, it really becomes a low-cost furniture conversion as the dowel and metal pole supports in total cost about $5. My husband applied the wallpaper to the back of the piece with spray adhesive and also added a protective clear coating on top of the painted portions to prevent scratching. I am quite happy with the way it turned out. It easily fit into an awkward nook in the room and provides lots of storage to hang clothes as well as have some folded away into baskets that will sit on the shelves. I also plan to designate the bottom storage with the door to hide those toys that seem to accumulate at a rapid pace for kids. Plus, it's at the perfect height for him to be able to learn to put his own toys away!