STEALING FLOOR SPACE TO BUILD A CLOSET

*this post contains affiliate links

 Because we took out the original closet in the upstairs bedroom at the mountain cottage and built a half bath in it's place, we needed to add a closet in some unused part of the room. The corner near the entry door was the most logical space.
As always, we started with a plan...

Here's the original plan we had for the upstairs bedroom, bathroom and closet:

This is the space before we even took the wallpaper down. The flat panel door is the entry door to the bedroom. The space to the left was unusable and the perfect place to put a closet. 

This is the closet in the rough framed stage. After framing, he drywalled the framing and trimmed it out. 

Building the Doors Mr. DIY started off making the closet doors with a full sheet of plywood which he cut to fit the closet opening plus about 2 1/2" of overlap because they would be sliding doors and one goes in front of the other. 

He used his mini-circular saw for the job. It's a VERY handy tool and SO easy to use! (no, we weren't given any compensation or a free tool for this)

Rockwell 4 1/2" circular saw on Amazon


3/4" wood screen bead molding (similar to scribe, but rounded on both edges) was used to cover the rough ends of the plywood. He used wood glue and brads to attach the scribe to the plywood. 

For the front of the doors, he split 1 x 3's in half, depth wise.

These were placed on the front side of the doors, to create a Craftsman style framed look. He attached them with wood glue. 

After filling all the holes and gaps, the doors were primed. (my job)

Mr. DIY installed a Stanley bi-pass door track, which came in a kit. We didn't just want to paint the metal, so Mr. DIY cut down a piece of molding and glued it over the metal track.( see next photo)

All finished!

 This closet has 52" of short hanging space, plus a big wood shelf. The closet rod is metal and the shelf sits on wood cleats. There is a 3" deep support in the middle, which is held in by friction. Eventually, we will install a light in the closet that comes on when you open the door.

Everything was painted with Benjamin Moore Decorator White. The trim is in semi-gloss and the walls are eggshell. The top surface of the shelf was sealed with Minwax water based PolyAcrylic so that nothing would stick to the paint. 

Here's the space we "stole" BEFORE:

And here's the space AFTER: There's still plenty of space to the left of the closet for a 66" wide dresser and a chair. 

Here's the view which shows the storage shelves and the closet on either side of the door. Shoes and folded items can be stored on the shelves. If we were to live here someday, we might want to put doors on the shelves. We consider the space as you enter the room the closet. (remember, we took out the original closet and put in the Worlds Smallest Half Bath). 

If you missed the post of how we built the custom storage shelves, you can find it HERE.

52" isn't much hanging space for clothes, but we plan to build more 3 feet more closet space when we enclose the space just outside the  upstairs bedroom. That will give us more closet space than we had upstairs when we bought the mountain cottage. 

Now that the bedroom is finished and is habitable, we've turned our attention to the kitchen. Of course there's a project we have to do before we start ripping out those lovely cabinets. We should be finished with our vintage style pantry in another weekend or two. Then, the kitchen reno is is on.

Can't wait. Hope you come back to see the updates. 

Pam

*this post contains affiliate links, which means if you purchase something from one of these links, I'll make a small commission. 

Disclaimer: The above post is about how we built a closet. We don't take any responsibility for any errors or results obtained from using this information. Using power tools can result in injury. When using power tools, use safety equipment.