A very talented friend of mine studied fashion design in Hong Kong. She never practiced, but ever were she to, I am confident that she would be excellent. She has a sizable wardrobe with everything from winter coats to long dresses. She used to live in a large, custom home in MetroWest with numerous walk-in closets–the contractor who installed her wire closet shelving used drywall anchors and did not bother to find the studs. Over time, the weight of the designer clothes and Louis Vuitton bags overcame the anchors in many locations.
She asked me to fix it, so I went through the house securing the shelving to the studs. A few years later, she downsized, and while house hunting rented a new construction. Her landlord did not allow her to screw into the walls, so she found a spring-loaded contraption from Korea on Amazon and wanted me to install it for her–this would have been entirely insufficient given the application. I had her return it and specified a Speed-Rail™-like, free-standing erection better suited to the task.
I worked with the client and made it as she wished. The aisles were narrower than I advised, but they were to her pleasure and she is not a large woman. Furthermore, the flights of pipe are close together because of the limited ceiling height–we did what we could.
When she moved again, I disassembled the rack, and reusing what I could, assembled one nearly three times its size in the finished basement of the new home. When I was nearly finished, she asked if it would be able to withstand the weight of her winter coats. I used it as a jungle gym to prove its solidity. With three horizontal pipes per flight, this is dense and rugged storage, and work that I am very proud of. I like to think that there are museums with lesser archival solutions than this.
Oliver Liu 