Horrible closet dimensions. Suggestions?

[John Krystek]

As a new homeowner I've realized I'm hooked on making home improvements. I am definitely a newbie, although from the looks of my tool collection you wouldn't know it ... I think I'm addicted to power tools.

One project I've held off on is our horrible bedroom closet. We have two closets - one is normal, and the other has ridiculous dimensions that render it almost unuseable: 59" (4' 11") deep by 26" (2' 2") wide and 7' 6" high. It currently has no shelves or bars, just a ceiling light.

I've searched this group many times and more often than not get the answers I need. I was hoping those with a little more experience in woodworking or construction could give me some suggestions as my wife is rapidly expanding her wardrobe and we may soon hit critical mass.

I have created crude visual aides to describe the following two ideas I've been toying with - Take a look at

12" deep along one of the long portions of the closet, and much deeper shelving towards the back. Positives: Relatively cheap & easy. Negatives: We can't gain much weight or our closet becomes inaccessable - we'd only have about a foot of space to enter the closet. 12" deep shelves aren't incredibly useful.

Three very deep (~ 30") shelves, mounted in the back of the closet, spanning the width of the closet and attached via sliding rails. Almost like a giant in-wall dresser. Towards the top I'd have a regular bar for hanging. Positives: easier access to bottom shelves which could be fully utilized. Negatives: High quality rails and large custom shelves are pricey. Installation is somewhat more difficult. My wife is very petite (5'2") and wouldn't be able to reach the back of the upper shelves without a stepstool. I would also be wasting quite a bit of space.

Expansion is impossible as the space has 2 exterior walls and a bathroom flanking its perimeter. Expanding the bathroom would not be useful.

Suggestions or comments are very greatly appreciated!

- John

[Joe Barta]

You're right... sucky closet design. I have two thoughts... first, there are a lot of closet companies out there and I'm sure some have web sites. You might find some ideas there. Quite possibly this has been dealt with before.

Of the two ideas you show on the web page, the one on the right seems more on the right track. The layout in middle pic is almost unusable.

I'd think in terms of shelves rather than drawers and I'd say that a clothes bar is out... maybe find another place for one.

Also, if you did decide on the right option, you could always build a stepstool to access the top shelves. you could keep the stepstool in the closet ;-)

Realistically your options are limited. I'm reminded of a saying... "It's a shit sandwich and you're just gonna have to take a bite."

Joe Barta

[New Wave Dave]

I'm going to disagaree with Joe on this one. I like the drawer option (deep drawers) with either open shelving or a two door (lockable?) cabinet above it with adjustable shelving. I might even consider how to place a hidden compartment behind it all though I haven't figured out how to access it from in front of the whole thing. Or, the open shelving option with a made-to-fit roll-out drawer unit.?

Put enough steak sauce onit and maybe you'll just learn to like it!

[Kevin Wilcox]

How about something like a full-height, full-width, and full-length roll-out closet? (don't forget to allow some clearance for the door and door knob). This assumes you've got room immediately outside the closet. Seems like if you just put it on four fixed casters (swivel casters would be more difficult to control) you could just roll it in and out of the closet and get to shelves, clothes racks, etc, from four sides if you want.

Kevin

[Lee Michaels]

I would look at trying to tear out a wall or two and build something right.

If that is not an option, have you considered some kind of rolling option? I have built a fair number of cabinets that roll around on some big casters. One place where i worked had me build some big cabinets that were rolled into a secure room at night and locked up.

By going to big enough casters and a solid handle/pushbar, even heavy cabinets could be moved about.

[fredfighter]

Thinking outside of the box....

How about expanding the Bathroom into the closet space?

How about a closet that is accessed from inside of the bathroom?

[John]

I would agree that the roll-out option is probably the best, provided that you have sufficient space in the bedroom. However, I would mount the cabinet on top/bottom rails to ensure that it glides straight and true and doesn't tip over on you. Imagine how a kitchen cabinet drawer mounted 90 degrees on its side might operate.

Pocket door rails come to mind but you might have to embed some in the floor on the bedroom side. Maybe an office supply house could find you some heavy steel ball bearing extension glides of the type used by records storage facilities, where shelves bearing hundreds of pounds of paper slide effortlessly.

J.

[New Wave Dave]

Uh, maybe these?

[John]

Another far out idea from the records storage facility: How about a revolving set of bins? I'm thinking of something that would operate on the principle of the Ferris Wheel, which would revolve fore and aft entirely inside the closet, and where each bin would be mounted on a pivot such that it always remained level.

OTOH shelves would be easier to build. Just stay skinny. :-)

J.

[John]

Something like that would work but these may only be mounted to the sides of the cabinet. I was thinking of something that would mount to the top and bottom, where the weight of the cabinet could be borne by the floor rather than by the rails themselves.

J.

New Wave Dave wrote:

[Jim McLaughlin]

The picur in h middle strikes me as a good idea, poorly executed.

If you flip flop / mirror mage the long shelf, mooving it from the right side to the left side, as you look into the closet, it works better.

Just my 2 cents.

[Ba r r y]

It could be worse.

My cape style home has upstairs closets with ceilings that after you're 2 feet in, slope to 2 feet high.

Imagination...

[Leuf]

You haven't said, and no one has asked, what you want to use the closet for. If you want hanging space, you could have some short rods coming out from the side with the last rod going the whole width. Shoe racks don't need to be 12" deep, neither do bookshelves.

-Leuf

[Josh]

How about a big floor-to-ceiling lazy susan in the back of the closet?

[John]

Touchæe Brilliant! ROTFL!

J.

Leuf wrote:

[Pat]

[Roy]

Someone else already pointed out that you haven't said what you want it for. We have a closet very similar to the one you describe.

Just for fun, consider ripping the drywall off the inside of the closet. Glue and use plenty of screws to reline the closet with 3/4 inch ply with the sheets aligned vertically. Now glue and screw another layer of ply, but horizontally over all the walls. Install a vault door. Hook up an entry alarm. You now have a huge walk-in safe for all your valuables - mink stoles, guns, coins, jewelry, stamps, Lee Valley catalogs, etc.

Regards,

Roy.

[Brooks Moses]

For that matter, how about walling off the back half of it and opening it to the outside to make a storage area for garden tools and the like?

(Of course, if it's on the second floor, this may be complicated.)

- Brooks

[Brooks Moses]

What I'd be tempted to do is to put widely-spaced 24"-deep shelves across the back, and then put a clothes-bar across the front at what would be a convenient place if the closet were only 35" deep.

That gives you a 26"-wide clothes bar, and a set of shelves that can only be easily accessed if you take most of the clothes out. The shelves can the be used to store things like the cardboard box and odd styrofoam pieces that the TV came in which you'll need if you ever need to return it, and the financial records from 2002 that are too old to need and too new to toss out, and that sort of thing that you want to keep but never actually want to use.

Some narrow shoe racks along the bottom sides of the closet might be useful, too.

- Brooks

[Buddy Matlosz]

for. We have a closet very

Glue and use plenty of

vertically. Now glue and

a vault door. Hook up an

mink stoles, guns, coins,

First of all, you could break into that "safe" with a sawzall. Second, it doesn't address how the storage space would be organized, which was the original poster's original problem.

B.