When I bought my current house, a 50-year-old ranch in need of substantial TLC, one of my first jobs was to replace the aging hollow-core sliding closet doors in the master bedroom with nicer looking bifolds. When I moved on to setting up my home office, I decided to create a long desktop surface in the corner using the old closet doors. The doors were 30-in. wide—too big for my purposes. Using my long saw guide, I cut 6-in. off the long edge of each door, with the intention of putting the cut side against the wall. Then I filled the holes and gouges in the door surface with wood filler, sanded, primed, and painted.

I've moved several times over the past 20 years. One of the few possessions that have made every one of those moves with me is my collection of heavy-duty metal shelving standards and brackets. I use only double-slotted standards, which are stronger and sturdier than the thin, single-slotted variety. I attach the brackets to the wall at stud locations using 2-in. drywall screws. I used six 4-ft.-long black standards for this project, spacing them 32-in. apart along adjacent walls. The bottoms of the standards are 21 in. above floor level, which results in a desktop height of 26 in. when the brackets are set in the bottom slots. That fits my size and my chair perfectly, but you may want to make an adjustment that fits you better.

Ideally, I would have set the desktop on 24-in. brackets attached to each of the standards. But I only had three 24-in. pieces, so I staggered them between three shorter 18-in. brackets.

With the desktop set up, I proceeded to set up shelves for books, supplies and writing projects. All of the shelves in the photo were retrieved from a storage unit in the garage, but elsewhere in the house I have shelves made from medium-density fiberboard. You can find brackets in a variety of sizes ranging from 5-24 in., which allows for custom-built shelves of any width you like. I typically make shelves that overhang brackets by an inch or so.

One secret to the long-term simplicity of this system is keeping a small supply of wall paint on hand. When I paint a room, I always pour some of the paint into a glass jar (with a plastic lid, as metal lids can rust over time). Then, when I remove the shelf brackets, I can spackle, prime, and paint, leaving the room good as new. I've also learned over the years to avoid driving the screws too tightly through the brackets. Overdriving can actually create ridges in drywall from brackets, and that makes for a lot of extra touch-up work.

Many of my standards and brackets have been painted, sometimes many times. I give them a light sanding, then spray paint with a color that allows them to blend in better with the room. I've found that, with a little planning, it is possible to control "cord clutter" by running wires and cords alongside standards to surge protectors mounted on the wall or bottom of the lowest shelf.

You can find double-slotted standards and brackets at home improvement and hardware stores, but you will probably need to shop online to find the full range of sizes that are available. I usually buy mine at Woodworkers Hardware.

The beauty of using standards is that if I decided to return this home office to its original function as a bedroom, I could dismantle the whole setup and touch up the walls in less than an hour. Even better, I could put the whole thing back together in another room in about the same amount of time. —Jeff Beneke