Aluminum, Mirror Sliding Doors & Enclosures Blog

Outfit a Walk-In Closet with a Wooden Closet Organizer

If you have a walk-in closet, you’re one step away from a luxurious dressing experience. What are you missing? A wooden closet organizer! A walk-in closet with nothing but some hanger bars is adequate, but a walk-in closet with an organizer is indulgent. Nothing feels more luxurious than having places for everything that are easy to access. Here’s what you’re missing.

Keep Your Clothing Accessible

Something most closets are missing is easy clothing accessibility. Even with boxes, bins, and bags, clothing and accessories aren’t as accessible as they could be. After all, how inclined are you really to unstack all of those boxes of seasonal clothes to find what you need in the off-season? Probably not very inclined. Unless you shift out your entire wardrobe each season, you probably just stick to one set of versatile clothes like the rest of us.

However, if your clothing becomes accessible year round, there’s no reason you can’t be your most comfortable, no matter the season. A wooden closet organizer is perfect for making clothing accessibility a reality. Say goodbye to boxes packed with your beloved sweaters and scarves. Say hello to ample hanger bar space and drawers for accessories.

Make Organization Look Great

Organization is possible with things like cardboard boxes or plastic bins. But, does it look good? No. Organization should look amazing. After all, it’s everything in its place, right? When you outfit your walk-in closet with an organizer, you make organization look great. Every piece of clothing having its own place looks amazing when its place is on one cohesive piece of furniture. An organizer from Keystone Home Products is exactly that. Whether you choose black or woodgrain finish, your organizer will tie everything together nicely.

Save on Floor Space

One of the the benefits to using a closet organizer for your clothing and accessories is that you save on floor space. While you may be able to pack off-season clothing into boxes, chances are, you’re stacking it in a corner or against the wall cross from your hanging clothing. When you install a walk-in closet organizer from Keystone Home Products, you save on floor space that would otherwise be taken up by suboptimal storage systems.

A walk-in closet organizer ensures everything has its place in one vertical space. That can free up your other wall – if your closet space is narrow – or make room for seating or other useful decor.

Customize Your Walk-In Closet Organizer

What’s the best part of buying a wooden, walk-in closet organizer from Keystone? You can customize it! Every organizer is made up of different parts: hanger bars, shelving, drawers, and so on. Everyone has different clothes storage needs. So, choose the elements that are right for you. Build yourself the ideal closet organizer for your closet. Get started by heading down to our store in Toronto or by giving us a call.

Create a Walk-In Closet Mirror Wall

Want your walk-in closet to feel like the Narnia of getting dressed in the morning? There’s more to a walk-in closet than just hanging up your t-shirts. A walk-in closet mirror wall will add a whole new dimension to your morning routine. Check out these great benefits.

Make Your Closet Feel Bigger

Putting a mirror wall into any room creates a size benefit. Mirrors make a space feel bigger. This is especially useful in a small space such as a walk-in closet. A walk-in closet mirror wall makes your closet feel bigger by reflecting the space back on itself. That tricks your visual brain into thinking the space is twice as big as it really is.

Not to mention, mirrors also reflect light. That means your space is also brighter than before. A walk-in closet mirror wall spreads light throughout the entire closet with ease. Finding the clothes you need is easier. So is seeing every pro and con of the outfit you just put together.

Make Coordinating Your Outfits Easier

Of course, what do mirrors do best but show us our reflections? If you enjoy putting together show-stopping outfits for work or social events, a walk-in closet mirror wall is the perfect solution. A standing mirror is one thing, but a wide mirror that runs the length of the closet is another.

When you can get a good look at your outfit from head to toe, it’s easy to see if something isn’t right, or if something’s missing. Make coordinating the different parts of your outfit easy with ample mirror space.

Catch Every Detail

An additional benefit to having a large mirror is caching details in your outfit that you might otherwise miss. The smaller the mirror, the harder it is to see the big picture of how you look. A full closet mirror wall, however? You’ll spot right away if you left a tag on your shirt or if your pants are tucked awkwardly into your shoe. Leave the house feeling confident of the way you look. After all, you’ve seen it from every angle!

Infinity Mirrors

Do you enjoy the infinity effect of dual mirrors that you can achieve in a clothing store changing room? Achieve the same thing in your own closet by installing mirror walls across from each other. At the end of a long closet is the perfect location for this effect. Simply install mirror panels that face each other and you can see your entire outfit, front and back. Seeing yourself from head to toe isn’t the only way to dress yourself. Even better is checking yourself front and back.

Affordable Wall Mirrors

Keystone Home Products has affordable wall mirrors available to anyone in the GTA. Just stop by our store to see what’s available in person. We provide all of the essential home organization products you’re after. Whether you need custom mirror dimensions or installation help, just let us know and we’ll do what we can to get you whatever you need.

Tips for Organizing a Hall Linen Closet

Keeping a linen closet from becoming completely overrun is a great way to reduce stress in your everyday life. You might be surprised by the kind of impact your hall linen closet can have on your mood. However, most of us use our linen closet every day – often multiple times – to get towels, cloths, and more. If you have to fight with your closet every time you get into it, it’s going to cause stress. Fortunately, Keystone Home Products has the organization know-how and the products you need to keep your closet in check. Without further ado, here are our tips for organizing a hall linen closet.

Remove Unnecessary Contents

If you’re like most people, you probably have a backstock of towels and such that you never really use. If you find yourself struggling to fit your freshly folded towels into your hall linen closet, it might be because you need to remove some things.

Consider saying goodbye to the old towels that no one in the house ever uses. Move rags you need for other crafts or messy projects to a different part of the house. If you’ve got a tool setup in your garage, this might be a good place for storing rags. Cleaning rags can be kept under your kitchen sink or wherever you store cleaning products. Save your linen closet space for towels and cloths you use in the bathroom.

Keep Things Folded and Adjust Folding Method

Once you’ve removed things taking up unnecessary space, it’s time to consider your folding method. Many people grow up folding their towels a certain way and continue using that method once they move into their own home. However, every home has different closet sizes. Your folding method might leave you with towels that are too wide to sit side by side comfortably. Experiment with folding methods to create folded towels that coexist more peacefully.

Increase Airflow for Fresher Laundry

If your towels and sheets come out of the closet smelling dusty or stale, it might be because of the shelving you have installed. If your home is on the older side, wooden shelving in closets can obtain a musty or dusty smell that they then pass on to your laundry.

To increase airflow and prevent your closet shelves from making your towels and other linens smell dusty, opt for wire shelving. Getting wire shelving for a closet will keep things from smelling like old wood, prevent things from growing dusty, and discourage pests from being able to make a home there.

Implement Drawers for Non-Linen Contents

If you keep things in your linen closet that aren’t linen, you can also benefit from adding drawers to the closet. Many people use their hall linen closet to store spare toiletries, like soap and shampoo. Keep these things in order by putting some organizer drawers onto one of the shelves. This will keep your closet looking more orderly and prevent you from knocking things over when removing or replacing towels or sheets.

Master Bedroom Wall Mirrors

If you’re looking for a great accent to your master bedroom, wall mirrors are a great idea. They come with a number of benefits past just offering you something to plan an outfit in. Let’s check out some of the ways they can improve your room and everyday life.

View Full Outfits

Of course, the first benefit of any big mirror is the ability to view your entire outfit at once. A bathroom vanity is limited to showing you how you look from the waist up. Sure, you can stand on a chair or back all the way out of the bathroom door in the hopes of seeing the rest. However, getting mirror walls for your bedroom will make this unnecessary.

Floor to ceiling mirrors allow you to comfortably try on clothes and view your entire outfit at once. This is great for professionals who need to look their best when they go into work each day. Even if you wear the same type of clothes each workday, a mirror does more than help you color coordinate. Being able to see yourself prevents embarrassing outfit mishaps like part of your shirt being untucked in the back. Get the full picture with master bedroom wall mirrors.

Create a Lighter Room

Seeing how you look is only the most basic benefit to having master bedroom wall mirrors. In addition to that, master bedroom wall mirrors will also make the room lighter. Mirrors reflect light – both from outside and from lamps. The reflected light bounces around the room, illuminating areas that would otherwise be dim or entirely dark. Creating a lighter room with your floor to ceiling mirrors will make finding things easier and can even reduce depression.

Make Your Room Feel Bigger

Finally, master bedroom wall mirrors will make your room feel bigger. Having an entire wall reflecting the room back on itself will make it feel twice as big. Even if you don’t actually have that extra space, tricking your brain into feeling like it’s there can make the actual size of your room feel much less cramped. Even small rooms with floor to ceiling mirrors can feel big and spacious.

Mirror Closet Doors

If your wall of choice for wall mirrors has a closet in it, fear not. You may not be able to install regular wall mirrors where your closet is, but you can install mirror closet doors. With regular wall mirrors and mirror closet doors working together, you can cover your entire wall with mirrors in one form or another.

Buy Master Bedroom Wall Mirrors

If you live in Toronto, Keystone Home Products is here to help you on your journey to a more spacious, lighter bedroom. We specialize in home products, including mirrors of all sizes. Give us a call if you have questions about our mirrors. Or, come down to our store in person and see what we have to offer. You’re sure to find exactly what you need and can completely transform your master bedroom with one simple addition

Prevent a Messy Closet by Avoiding These Storage Mistakes

It’s easy for a closet to get messy and unmanageable. However, you can prevent a messy closet with a little help from Keystone Home Products. We excel in home organization and want to help you get your closet in order by avoiding these storage mistakes that almost everyone falls victim to.

Using Your Closet as General Storage

This is a relatively simple mistake to make. Growing up, as kids and teens, most of us only had our room and closet to keep our things. We got used to putting everything in this space. However, carrying that practice into adulthood when you have more space at your disposal can cause problems.

As adults, we usually have more clothing. After all, now we have work clothes and formal clothes, workout clothes, etc. We can’t afford to waste space in our closets for boxes of old notebooks. But, there’s also no reason to throw out old things that are important to you. Instead, you need to find a place for these items that reflects the infrequency of their use.

Buying some shallow, under-bed storage drawers is a fantastic use of space. These allow you access, but can be a bother to get into for items you use regularly. Use the space for non-clothing items you want to keep but rarely use.

Using Closed Boxes

People underestimate the power of a lid or some tape on their willingness to access something. Almost everyone, at some point, has stored something in a box, closed it up, and put it on a shelf only to find it 6 years later, not even realizing they still had it anymore. One of the biggest storage mistakes is putting things in closed, unlabeled boxes.

Instead of packing things away, closed off and hard to access, store things in open-top boxes with labels. Invest in some nice, square storage baskets/drawers that can slide onto a top closet shelf with ease. If you aren’t interested in paying for more storage, you can also just cut the flaps off some cardboard boxes so that they’re open on top.

If you want them to look a bit nicer, consider covering them with a nice design using wrapping paper or some old fabric. And, don’t forget to label them. Use a small slip of paper, list the items in the box, and use some clear tape to stick the list to the front of the box. Now, every time you go into the closet, you’ll glance at your storage boxes and their content lists and store that information away in your brain for later.

Leaving Things on the Closet Floor

This is an easy mistake to make. From dirty clothes to discarded shoes, people leave things on their closet floor all the time. This is a huge storage mistake. These things will begin to pile up, blocking the closet door and making accessing the closet harder. With each added layer of difficulty to get into the closet, you’re more likely to make the problem worse by putting things somewhere they don’t belong. Get yourself a hamper for laundry and make sure you take the extra ten seconds to put things back where they go. You’ll thank me later.

Having No Storage Shelving

Finally, one of the biggest storage mistakes is having no storage shelving. If your closet has nothing but a hanger bar, of course it’s going to end up messy. Getting some shelving or a closet organizer will change your life and make storage so much easier. Keeping things clean is way easier when everything has a place.

How to Customize Your Shower Enclosure with Glass Etching

Do you like to give your home interior a bit of personal flair? You’re not the only one! Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to customize your home so that every corner of it feels like you. Keystone Home Products wants to address one really great DIY technique that’s easy to do and extremely underutilized: glass etching. We’ll briefly cover how you can use glass etching to customize your glass shower enclosure.

What Is Glass Etching?

It may sound dangerous or difficult, but glass etching is actually very easy. What is it? Well, have you ever seen a piece of glass – a wine glass, a candle holder, an old glass lamp shade, etc. – with an opaque design on it? This design is usually white, but it’s not something applied to the surface, like paint. This is glass etching. The glass is transformed to be opaque in only select areas, allowing you to paint or stencil on any design you want.

How Is It Done?

Glass etching may sound like something you have to do with special tools or a laser, but it’s not. It’s much simpler than that. The opaque design added to any piece of glass is done by applying acid to it. The acid eats through the surface of the glass, creating such consistent damage to it that it simply loses its transparency.

Applying acid to something sounds dangerous, right? Well, not much more than most other DIY projects, or putting in a load of laundry with some bleach. The acid used for glass etching is sold in hardware or crafting stores. It comes in the form of a cream or paste.

If you intend to do some glass etching, you’ll want to look up a detailed guide. However, the general process involves creating a template with a sheet of vinyl, temporarily adhering it to the surface of the glass, applying your glass etching solution to the exposed part of the glass, giving it some time to work its magic, then cleaning it all off. Left behind is a beautiful, opaque design on your glass.

Using Glass Etching to Customize Your Shower Enclosure

Glass etching is most commonly used to customize small pieces of kitchenware, such as champagne glasses. This is often done for printing dates or names on things to create memory pieces for things like wedding dates. However, glass etching is a versatile craft and can be used for many more things than people frequently use it for. For example, you could use it to add a custom design to your shower enclosure.

Some great ideas are to:

Add a band of growing grass and blooming flowers to the bottom of the enclosure
Outline the edges of the entire enclosure with blooming vines and leaves
Create a simple, geometric pattern to give a lightweight framing effect to the enclosure
Add some words that inspire you – a favorite poem, quote, or mantra

Revitalize or Start with Fresh Glass

When you customize your glass shower enclosure with glass etching, you have two ways to go about it. If you have an old shower enclosure, you can use glass etching to bring it back to life. Applying glass etching specifically to areas with topical impurities or damage might even erase the imperfections entirely. However, if you’d like a blank canvas to work from, you can also get a new, glass shower enclosure from Keystone Home Products in Toronto.

Replace Damaged Closet Shelving in Toronto

Our closets are such important parts of our homes. However, it’s easy to forget just how important they are until something goes wrong. Fortunately, if you need to replace damaged closet shelving in the Toronto area, Keystone Home Products has just what you need.

Damaged Closet Shelving

In old homes, especially, old shelves can sometimes break. This is common with thinner shelves that have had something big and heavy stored on them. Maybe you had a lot of heavy ingredients stored on a pantry shelf. Or, perhaps you put a heavy box full of old school papers onto the shelf in a bedroom closet. Regardless, you’re down a shelf, and we have plenty.

Additionally, shelves can be damaged from liquids spilling. This is especially common kitchen pantries. If a bottle of oil spills and isn’t noticed for many hours, your shelf can be completely destroyed after soaking up the oil. Hall closets are equally susceptible to things like spare shampoo or acetone nail polish remover. When accidents happen, you need a reliable home goods store to help you out of a jam. Keystone Home Products is exactly that for the people of Toronto.

Replace Damaged Closet Shelving

When you need to replace damaged closet shelving, Keystone provides you with options.

We have wooden shelves that are typically part of closet organizers. However, these can also come in narrower sizes, as all of our wooden organizers are custom built with basic organizer parts. Therefore, if you need to replace some wooden shelves in a closet, we can provide you with the shelving to do so. Either buy individual, custom shelves to mount on existing side bars, or simply place a narrow organizer shelf into the closet.

Additionally, we have a lot of wire shelving. Wire shelving is a favorite, as it minimizes pest access, is spill-proof, and may bend under great pressure, but won’t break like wood. Wire shelving can also be bought in pieces or placed into a closet as a system.

Closet Organizers for Walk-Ins

If you’re struggling with shelving and organization in a walk-in closet, the solution is almost always a wooden closet organizer. These systems are completely customizable and will change your life.

They come with ample shelving for boxes, bins, shoes, books, and whatever else you want to store on them. However, you can also opt for many hanger bars for storing clothes. Give yourself the room you need to hang clothes without wrestling just to hang a shirt back up. And, that’s not all. Our wooden closet organizers can also come with drawer space. This is essential for storing small accessories, or even other knick-knacks.

No matter what your shelving needs, Keystone Home Products can help you replace damaged closet shelving with ease. We assure you, you’ll leave Keystone with confidence. Give us a call if you have questions about our products or how you can custom order them.

Replace Custom Glass Shower Door in Toronto

Some glass shower enclosures are prefabricated and can be bought and installed with standard dimensions. However, many homes have custom shower doors with no glass enclosure. These doors often block off a one-sided opening to an alcove shower and the dimensions may be customized to fit. The problem is, if one of these doors breaks, replacing it means more than a trip to the hardware store. If you need to replace a custom glass shower door in the Toronto area, Keystone Home Products is here to help.

Replace Broken Custom Glass Shower Door

If your custom glass shower door has broken and you’re looking to replace it, Keystone Home Products is the place to go. However, before worrying about a replacement, be sure to properly clean your bathroom and shower area. Shattered glass is incredibly dangerous and even the tiniest little pieces can cut deeply. Put on some protective shoes, sweep up the big pieces into a dustpan, then sweep the bathroom multiple times after. If you have a vacuum with a hose, use this to check corners and go over the floor once you’ve swept.

Once your bathroom is safe to traverse barefoot again, you can begin worrying about future showers and your need for a door. Give us a call if you need to replace a broken custom-sized shower door. We cut mirror and glass for our customers all the time in order to fit the dimensions of their homes. Let us know the dimensions your door should be and we can get you a new door to replace the one that broke.

Replace Outdated Custom Glass Shower Door

Broken doors aren’t the only ones that need to be replaced. Custom glass shower doors have been around for a long time. If you’ve got one that’s old and ugly, we’re here to help. Many old shower doors have unattractive patterns in them to prevent clear views into the shower. These textures have fallen out of style and no longer match modern interiors.

Not to mention, many old shower doors have metal frames. These are generally not in style anymore. With modern glass-cutting technology, it’s easy to mount a frameless glass door with strong, steel hinges – no frame needed. Replace your old, outdated custom glass shower door with one from this century.

Replace Enclosure with Custom Glass Shower Door

Another situation that calls for custom glass shower door shopping is when going from an enclosure to just a door. This is often the case during renovations or if you need a bigger shower door. Many people replace old, narrow shower doors with wider ones. Not only are these easier to step through, they’re also more accessible for people with mobility difficulties, with or without mobility aids.

If you’re looking to get rid of an old enclosure and invest in a wider, custom shower door, we can help you. Give us a call and let us know what you need and we’ll let you know what we can do.

Professional Uses for Wire Shelving

We recently wrote a bit about the best uses for wire shelving at home. However, we know that a lot of the things considered home goods are also used in professional spaces. That’s why Keystone Home Products is here again to cover the best professional uses for wire shelving as well. Don’t worry, we didn’t forget those of you trying to improve your shop or work environment!

1. Folded Apparel Shelving

If you run a clothing shop, one of the best ways you can improve the shop is by storing folded apparel on wire shelving. Everyone has to go into a clothing shop now and again. If that shop includes folded apparel, getting it from a wooden shelf that hasn’t been cleaned in ages is really unsavory. More surface area means more germs, more dust, more dirt, and less appeal.

However, when you store folded apparel on wire shelving, you allow that clothing to breathe and remain fresh longer. The clothing is less likely to take on the smell of the shop. It’s also less likely to get dusty. The last thing you want is to trigger a customer’s allergies when they pull a dusty shirt on in the changing room.

2. Office Supply Shelving

If you work in an office, you know there’s no shortage of storage needs. Offices come with a lot of supplies. From paper to pens, ink cartridges and sticky notes, there’s a lot that needs somewhere to go. Putting up some wire shelving in a copy room or along a back wall gives you somewhere to store these things where they’re easily accessible. Employees can easily find what they need and knowing when something is running low is as easy as a glance.

3. Supply Closet Shelving

No matter what kind of business you work for or run, you almost certainly have a supply closet. If your supply closet is in need of a boost, if you’re moving your business to a new space, or if you’re renovating an old coat closet, you need wire shelving. One of the best professional uses for wire shelving is mounting it across an empty closet space. Then, your empty old coat closet can be used for storing all kinds of things.

Dental and medical offices can use supply closet wire shelving for storing backstock of packaged supplies. Or, if you’re in a medical environment where patients stay for surgery or overnight observation, you can also use it for storing blankets, pillows, and gowns in more sanitary conditions.

4. Cubicle Shelving

Finally, the last of our favorite professional uses for wire shelving: cubicle shelving. Cubicles have a marked lack of storage space in them aside from the surface of your desk. If you need somewhere to store notebooks, binders, stationery, or boxes of small supplies, wire shelving is here for you. Wire shelving is lightweight, making it great for mounting on a cubicle wall. If your cubicle wall isn’t made for screws, you can also buy or create a wire rig that hooks over the top edge of the cubicle. This is especially stable and lacks the risk of screws coming loose.

Take your cubicle to the next level and reduce crowding your desk space with wire shelving from Keystone Home Products.

Top Uses for Wire Shelving at Home

There are a lot of uses for wire shelving at home, but some of these uses are more practical than others. Keystone Home Products offers wire shelving to all of our lovely customers in Toronto and the GTA. We want you to make the most of them. Therefore, we’ve put together a short list of the best ways you can utilize these shelves at home. Let’s start with-

1. Kitchen Overflow Shelving

One of the top uses for wire shelving at home is in the kitchen as overflow shelving. Are you struggling to fit everything into your cupboards? Wire shelving is the solution.

You can use these shelves to store snacks, cereals, boxed goods, and more. The best part about the shelves being made of wire is that they’re pest resistant. Pests have a harder time traversing wire than solid surfaces and are less likely to get into your things or try making a home in them.

For that reason, and due to the shortage of space, wire shelving is especially useful in apartment kitchens. Without a full pantry, apartment kitchens often leave you with cramped cupboards. Storing some of your things on wire overflow shelving is a great way to give yourself more wiggle room when unloading groceries.

2. Garage Shoe Shelving

There are as many ways to store shoes as there are people to wear them. Everyone does it differently. However, one of the best uses for wire shelving at home is for just this.

Setting up some wire shelves in the garage, beside the door to the house, is the perfect way to store shoes. The shelves offer a clear view of their contents because they’re not solid, like wood. Plus, because of those gaps between the wire bars, any dirt on your shoes will simply fall through instead of gathering on the shelf. That means a neater appearance in the long-run.

3. Supplementary Closet Shelving

Closets are made for storing things, but isn’t it curious how they so frequently lack the necessary storage fixtures? If your closet has plenty of extra space and you’re struggling to make use of it, put in some wire shelving. These shelves can be used for storing dress shoes, boxes of seasonal clothes, decorative baskets of accessories like scarves, and more.

Plus, if you have no built-in shelf above your clothing bar, you can use wire shelving there instead. The space above your clothing bars is extremely useful and would be terrible to let go to waste. A long stretch of wire shelving would be just the thing to salvage it. Use this shelving to store boxes of knickknacks, accessories, notebooks you need semi-regularly, hats, and more.

4. Patio Plant Shelving

Finally, one of our favorite uses for wire shelving at home is as patio plant shelving. So many of us love keeping plants. They add a bit of life to our homes and give us something to do in our free time. If you enjoy keeping plants on your patio, wire shelving is the ideal display solution for them.

Wire bars allow loose soil to fall through instead of gathering on a surface. This open design also means watering them is no stress, as you won’t have to worry about warped wood or pooling. Plus, because plants will drain excess water, you can even set up your shelf so that you only need to water the plants on top. They’ll then drip unneeded water to the plants below, creating a wonderful trickle-down system that’s both practical and relaxing.