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If you’re on a tight budget, the least expensive material you can buy for DIY closet shelves is chipboard, a.k.a. particle board. This inexpensive material is made from a pulp of sawdust, resin, and glue that’s pressed together under high temperature and pressure. As you can imagine, it’s not very sturdy and might buckle under your blue jean collection, so you should only use it if you’re storing very light items. 

There are certainly luxury upgrades you can make but you can seriously improve the look and functionality of a closet without spending much money. Color matching will make the closet seem bigger so any shelves painted the same as the wall is a good tip. While pre-made closet organizers may seem expensive they offer an aesthetic look that's hard to achieve with DIY methods. Lastly, removing clutter and unworn items will help the closet seem bigger and cleaner.

Bump-out additions can add some space to a closet without requiring any significant structural work. This entails pushing back the existing rear or side of the closet, simply moving the wall into either an adjacent room or unused space. For ground-floor closets, this could even be extended to the exterior of the home, but that has its own complications. Bump-outs are a good discussion to have with your contractor if you’re just looking to increase the space a little—not renovate the entire closet space.

When you are securing your DIY home office built-ins to the wall, you should start by locating the wall studs. You'll then want to use long screws to attach the cabinets, shelves, and bookcases directly to the wall studs. Your built-ins will be far too heavy to attach to the drywall alone by using anchors.