Actual Woodworking Again

[Leon]

About 3 months ago I posted some pictures of a plan to overhaul our master closet. Builder grade has single shelves and hanger rods totaling about 28 feet long. Unfortunately the shelves and rods crossed each other in the corners and effectively making 10 feet hidden and unusable. On top of that the highest shelf was 80" from the floor and we have 9 foot tall ceilings in the closet. Read all of this as a lot of wasted and unused space and was always a cluttered mess.

My design makes use of the tall ceilings and moves the hanger rods about

8 1/2 feet from the floor for half of the hanging space. In those spots I used the wardrobe lifts to swing down to 3 feet for easy access. Under those top rods are the mid rods and under that double height drawers. In the middle back wall a place for the dirty clothes baskets, linens, towels, and miscellaneous other stuff. We have been using the closet with out the back cabinet for about 4 weeks and no clutter. I just added the back center storage cabinet in the last few days and emptied most of the lower drawers into that cabinet.

FWIW we have much more storage and about 20% more "usable" hanger rod space.

SHMBO gets the long side, 14 feet of hanger space and 6 drawers.

The middle.

My side...

[hubops]

Efficient storage / closet = always a great idea ! nicely done.

ps : what is in the far left corner - floor air vent methinks ?

John T.

[DerbyDad03]

Nice job. Keep it neat! ;-)

Corner Object Quiz: Cardboard tube, possibly containing a poster or a set of plans/blueprints.

[Sonny]

Skeletons? :)

Good job, Leon.

Sonny

[Leon]

Thank you

No floor vents, just blank space. Why not fill the wardrobe to the wall? There would have been no clearance for the drawers to clear the center back cabinet. Same goes for the right side. We will certainly find something to stick back in those corners, I'm, thinking small shelves.

[Leon]

Thank you!

[Leon]

Thank you!

It has remained neat since installing the wardrobe hangers and drawers. Actually there is a void on both sides which lends itself on the right side to store a couple of long stair hand rails with steel hooks screwed into the ends.

Whut????

My wife does not like window light coming into our bedroom in the mornings. Sooo we covered the windows with shades and black out curtains, and we have the light bridge/bedroom towers blocking those windows. How do we get our in case of fire? The long poles with hooks will allow us to break out the garden window over the garden tub in the master bathroom.

[dpb]

Yeah, otherwise those are going to be dust bunny havens. Probably a solid base diagonal across the front to keep from having to try to clean back underneath and then across...but it's pretty deep area back to the wall behind the hanger rails. Might even consider a back there to prevent stuff being pushed back to the point it's almost unaccessible excepting for perhaps a few specific bulky items that might just be able to be stored there that aren't high use elsewhere.

Making use of corners is a difficult problem...in the kitchen cabinet corner, dad and I built in a lazy susan--nothing unusual in that except we took out a good-sized square from the shelves so could move the center pole out and have the overall shelf diameter fill the entire area instead of centering a full shelf in the middle as a standard off-the-shelf one is done. Increased overall storage and accessiblility a bunch because the shelves rotate out of the opening by 8" or so and thus have access to stuff back in the middle without digging through what is in front--and the cutout also gives access to the two lower shelves directly.

Of course, it took some extra engineering and the use of Krause one-way plow thrust bearings to hold the load, but as you're fond of demonstrating in a lot of your items, one can climb on it and have no fear of failure... :)

[dave.marulli]

As long as you brought it up...

Could drawer clearance have been provided if you had hung the back cabinet on the wall instead of having sides that came down to the floor?

I'm not saying it would have been worth it,just asking.

[dave.marulli]

John mentioned the object in the far left corner. If he meant the left corner as you face your side, it looks like there is something back there.

To me, it looks like one end of a cardboard shipping tube.

[dpb]

On 8/30/2019 4:19 PM, [e-mail] wrote: ...

Look at the "hers" view and you'll see a purple/blue robe(?) tie hanging down over the far end. That's what you see in the center view on the left rear.

[dpb]

On 8/30/2019 4:15 PM, [e-mail] wrote: ...

Could clear the drawers, but then either they would be longer than the hanging areas or the cabinet would occlude the front of the hanging area if it were full length/longer.

Corners and shelves/cabinets just don't mesh well even after all these years. There is no ideal solution to the "hole".

[DerbyDad03]

How could John (or anyone) mistake that for a floor vent?

[DerbyDad03]

Other than storing skeletons. ;-)

[dpb]

...

Personally I don't have any of those; but any that did would likely be four-legged and hard to stand on end... :)

[Leon]

Good point and I did re work the drawings several times. This was ultimately simpler when considering the full purpose of the upper cabinets. We demo'ed the shelves and hanger rods that the builder put in. All of that was caulked and painted with the same color paint as the new cabinets have. The cabinets, first off, hides the less than stellar repairs of cutting all of those caulk lines. Not horrible but a closer look shows the previous locations of the shelves. You can ever see them on the walls in the pictures, if you zoom in close enough. Next the top swing down hanger rods in the closed position are very close to 100" above the floor. T mount those swing down hangers on the wall would have required for the arms to be in constant tension, leaning out at all times to provide room on the inner side of the clothes rod. The upper section sides actually stop on top of the drawer units. I had door ways and sharp turns to make and had to limit my cabinets size so that I could actually get them into the closet. So basically no cabinet was taller than the door opening, together top and bottom are close to

9' tall. And ultimately the upper swing down hanger rods come down to about 5', so thee would still have been interference.

[Leon]

Wow you really zoomed in on that picture. LOL. No what you see it one of the two stair hand rails with the steel hook on the top end. As mentioned previously, those are to break out the garden bath window should we need to escape the house quickly. They are just over 6' long.

[Leon]

Correct.

[Leon]

So the dust bunnies have crossed out minds more than once. That area, on both sides, is larger than it appears. The tiles including 1 grout line ate approximately 14" wide.

The clearance from the end of the side cabinets to the wall is just over

12" and the clearance between the back center cabinet side and the drawer unit front is approximately 5". We have tried successfully to sweep that area with a small dust broom. Not a problem.

As as strange as this sounds, when we emptied the closet to do the demo there was surprisingly little dust in the corners and or under the bottom row of clothes. Almost 9 years of never sweeping or vacuuming in that closet. I will say however that we have had a robot vacuum cleaner before and ever since we moved in. It runs 5 days a week so little dust builds up anywhere. Well, except for the 9 ceiling fan blades.

[DerbyDad03]

t   methinks ?

Or just cut some carpet squares to fit. Dust bunnies be gone!

Every now and then (and by that I mean "never") take them out and vacuum them. ;-)