Stand Alone Closets
For my vacation home in the Tennessee mountains, we recently bought a stand alone wardrobe closet that houses all our coats and clothes for easy access right by the front door. It wasn’t a cheap expense, I’ll be the first to admit. In fact, it set us back about $800 because we wanted to get something that would last as long as the vacation cabin – that is to say, for the rest of our lives! And that is one reason why we chose a closet that’s more of an armoire than some kind of Target “build it in 5 minutes out of the box” standalone closet unit.
What’s the point of spending so much money then if there’s a cheaper version at Target, like a portable closet? Well, those products aren’t so bad in and of themselves, but there’s something to be said about saving up your money and making a one time purchase for a product that is going to outlast the value of its initial purchase price. There is no way a portable wardrobe closet on wheels would last 4 decades without cramping, leaning inwards, or otherwise just starting to “give.” But a solid wood wardrobe closet? No way it’s going to give anytime soon!
Our stand alone closet, or armoire – whichever you prefer – in and of itself weighs more than enough for one person to not be able to move around. It took two grown men (myself included) to move it into our home. (And I’m not kidding when I say once we got it up those steps and positioned in the opening hallway to the front door we were ready to let it stay there!) It’s heavy for good reason: solid, thick wood is not light. We don’t know for sure, but from the looks of it, we think this stand alone closet was hand crafted or at least hand guided in its production, as we did buy it second hand (hence,the term “antique armoire”) yet don’t let that fool you – it’s as solid as it was the day it was made, if not more solid through the work it’s had since then.
We love how it looks by the door. It stands about 6 feet tall of solid wood. This stand alone closet has two opening doors in its main cabin, which we’re mainly using as a high class coat closet, and then one drawer at the top and three more drawers at the bottom, which work nicely for holding our winter wear such as gloves, hats, scarves, and whatnot, ever so useful in the mountains.
Being that our cabin is also wooden, having a wooden stand alone closet matches the theme we already have going on, too.
In the end, I’m pretty psyched about the purchase, and it’s much more exciting spending $800 on this than the $2,000 we spent last year to fix the plumbing!