Valeria Jacobs is a very busy woman. When she’s not running Rebecca & Genevieve, a home decor store named after Valeria’s mother and grandmother, she’s creating content, being a mom, a designer, and completing various DIY projects in her own California home, the first of which was a fireplace transformation. “That first project completely changed the look of the fireplace for under $100,” Valeria says. 

Inspired and armed with confidence from the fireplace project and the Internet–You Tube in particular–she decided to take on an awkward area of her home: a dark closet underneath her staircase. With a few coats of our rich yellow, Good As Gold, she remade the space using smart pantry DIY hacks. “It was a junk closet. We just stored random things from around the house there. It was a waste of space,” she says. 

Before

After

Turning the under-stair space into a storage closet presented a series of challenges, including dim lighting. To create a brighter, more eye-catching pantry, she painted the bottom trim, a shelving unit, and the sloped ceiling in warm-toned Good As Gold. “I have been loving yellow lately,” Valeria says. “And this pantry was the perfect spot for that beautiful color. It also complements our kitchen cabinet color so well–the perfect color story!” She used floral wallpaper with golden-yellow accents to create a cohesive design. 

Another design challenge involved deciding whether to position cabinets in an area with a sloped ceiling, and how to create storage without blocking access to the home’s crawl space, located inside the closet. “It was a tiny space. My goal was to maximize storage and make it functional and beautiful,” she explains. 

Before

After

Valeria installed shelving that allows her to mix and match various crates, maximizing food storage in a modular way. In the design, she also considered who would be accessing the cabinets and whether the storage worked for them. “The main users,” she says, “are me and my kids, who are always sneaking into the pantry for snacks.” 

In the end, Valeria created a room that’s not only purposeful but also creates added value and a sense of cohesiveness in her home. Her advice for doing the same? Bend or break the “rules”. “I don't like to follow ‘rules’ when it comes to design. When designing a space, I let our home speak to me and try to bring the most out of every room,” she says. The result is a complete transformation of a forgotten room–a great reminder for us to seek out those lost corners in our own spaces. 

Next: Before & after: this "cloffice" makeover is small space goals.