Custom Bedroom Closet Organizer: Simon’s Room

May 6, 2024 Jon Off CNC Router, CNCROi.com News, Furniture, Wood Products,

I was renovating my son’s bedroom over the holidays while he was visiting family and part of that was making a custom bedroom closet organizer for all this stuff.

Let me preface to say this is the very first real closet organization I’ve ever designed, it’s been a few months now and I’ve learned a tremendous amount about this subject in actual experience with this custom bedroom closet organizer first-hand so the next one I make will be made slightly differently, his closet hold a tremendous amount of things and is endlessly flexible as his needs change, so in that regard, it performs greatly!

I knew immediately that Simon’s custom bedroom closet organizer would be made using 3/4″ MDF, there really wasn’t any option when it came to making it, not because cloths are heavy, but because it’s the least likely material to sag over great distances and as you can see in the final picture, I went with dividing his closet in half with huge shelves verses a bunch of small shelves.

As I also didn’t know how this custom bedroom closet organizer would actually work best with his mix and match of high fashion accessories, so there were only two shelves that were static, the rest are fully and easily adjustable and of course, adding more shelves is no issue as a result.

Like anything else, you can read and study something all you want but until you have real-world experience with it, there isn’t much intelligent input that’s possible, so I opted for my Simon’s closet to be as utilitarian as possible rather than a bunch of fancy options… and in that regard, it works fantastically!

The closest project I did in my house, though at a far smaller scale, relating to organizing closets was my addition to a current closet.

When it comes to cabinetry, my old Thermwood CNC router you see here is the ultimate beast of a machine to make these, of course, I’ve since upgraded to an even newer and fully featured Thermwood beast of a CNC router, but what I can cut with my current machine vs the one in the video below is identical, I just have a lot more options with the new one as to HOW I make it.

As with anything else that I make at the shop where positioning is an open question due to the tightness of the design, I cut out a silhouette of the overall design first to make sure everything fit at CNCROi.com.

I might be able to buy 5 ft x 10 ft 3/4″ MDF but I used 4 ft x 8 ft as it’s not a special order size and hence, readily available rather than having to wait a week or two.

Plywood is great for a wide variety of projects, for this project, MDF was a better fit, because I needed something I could stress and flex with little damage, doing this closet organizer using plywood would have been great if the walls in the closet were flush, parallel and square.

When this custom bedroom closet organizer, I wanted ultimate flexibility, as such, you see a lot of holes that are actually for pins to support the shelving, so if I want to add additional storage shelves or move things around, not a problem using pins!

This entire custom bedroom closet organizer project was to take-up two full sheets of 4 ft x 8 ft MDF but I was able to manually optimize it to fit on a sheet an a half instead, this means less waste for the fire pit with the same results, the extra material can be used for other projects at CNCROi.com!

The entire fit-up for this custom bedroom closet organizer can be done without using any hardware, other than the pegs for the height of the shelving, I did this on purpose because the closet in his room isn’t square nor level, so by making this in this manner, I can essentially friction fit everything, without even needing any glue, and it’s plenty strong pushing against the two side walls of the closet.

After the first sheet of MDF was processed by my CNC router, it was time to process the next half sheet in order to make the completed segments I needed for Simon’s closet at CNCROi.com.

Another organizer I made many years ago was my kangaroo organizer, worked great and was fun to make.

What I really enjoyed about having my CNC machine make all the parts of this custom bedroom closet organizer is that I had no need for further processing, no need to load things up and measure using a table saw nor drill to make the peg holes a specific depth and spacing, everything was programmed and everything worked perfectly as it should in one step.

You can see the trenches on two parts of this custom bedroom closet organizer, that’s what give this overall project strong, the cross-members will slot into place into there and push back onto the wall from there, hence, no needing any screws but if I did need screws, that’s also a great spot to put them into from the side.

As I don’t have a paint booth at CNCROi.com yet, I just used a roller with paint after laying the parts on my CNC router bed.

I flatten my sacrificial board quite often so a bit of paint really have no affect on anything so it’s the perfect flat surface to paint upon at CNCROi.com.

Unlike hardwoods or real wood, MDF paints so much easier.

After the paint dried, it was time to install this custom bedroom closet organizer in Simon’s room, which was a finishing touch on his room as I redid his entire room anyways.

The best part about this organizer are those holes, it makes his custom bedroom closet organizer so much more useful and flexible.

Here are some pictures of Simon’s room after getting the closet organizer set-up in his closet, it transformed from a prison cell to a kid’s bedroom over the course of two weeks.