Dan's fall and winter project is to finish the front room. Originally a bedroom, I set up my big floor room in it and am now using it as a weaving room. Or at least I will be when all the remodeling is done! There are several things that need finishing in this room: the walls where he replaced the original windows, the back of the masonry stove, and the closet. Hes starting with the closet.
The first step was to tear out the remaining closet wall.
What's immediately curious is that paint job. Why would they only paint it green part way up? Probably because that was a high as they could reach.
Our ceilings are high at 8'10." The original closest door measured 72" in height (standard door height is 80"). The closet shelf was at installed at 64." Include the door molding and this configuration only allowed 7 inches between the shelf and the top of the door for shelf access.
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| You can see more photos including the original room layout here. |
The other problem with this closest is that the original interior depth was only 17.5 inches. That's barely wide enough for a clothes hanger! By tearing out the wall, we gained 4 extra inches in depth. You can see the difference in this next photo looking up into the closet ceiling.
The original closet interior is painted white. The unpainted part is where the wall used to be. The 2x6 is where the new closet exterior will be.
The next step was to cover the exposed bricks on the lefthand wall.
I missed getting a photo, but before he put up the plywood, Dan added a thick piece of ceramic fiber blanket to insulate the wall, the same stuff that he used to insulate the masonry stove core. Because it's just the inside of the closet, he used plywood instead of trying to match the tongue-and-groove.
The plan is to install standard hollow core bypass doors, with a shelf over top to give me access to the additional storage space, similar to what Dan did in our bedroom.
In the bedroom closet, Dan built shelves. He asked me to figure out what I want to do with this closet, so I've had to think about how the space will be used. What I really need is storage space for my totes and boxes, not a clothes closet. Considering that the room could still be used as a bedroom, however, I don't know that it would be wise to put the whole closet in shelves. At the moment, I'm considering some stand-alone wire shelf units, something like these. One on either end of the closet.
So those are our tentative plans. Next step is paint those walls.
1 comment:
I found that we only needed about 24 inches of hanging space per person in our closets. (I don't believe in owning more clothing than you need from one laundry day to the next.) I used the rest of the space for storage of toys, sports equipment, and crafts.
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