Distinctive Spaces

Finding places for everything is always such a huge challenge in older homes.

The staircases and hallways are narrow, the rooms are small and the closets are either non existent or so tiny that they are virtually unusable.

Recently, I completed a couple of closet “renovations” in a mid Toronto century home. I call them renovations because usually I am simply replacing the interior “guts” of the closet (shelving, etc) but in this case we actually opened up the walls to make access much easier.

We had two closets to deal with, one in the upstairs hallway and one in a bedroom. The problem with these closets was that they are only 16″ deep, extremely shallow and both had 24″ standard doors, so accessing the items kept on either side of the doors or up above was almost impossible. The shallow depth also meant that hanging clothing was awkward at best. Typically you need 22″ to 24″ of depth to properly hang clothes.

The plan in the bedroom was actually a little different than what ultimately became the result. Originally I was opening up the closet to create a large built in book case with a stand alone wardrobe for clothing.

Part way through the demo, the client switched gears and decided on using a stand alone book case and having the closet hold her clothing. She was fine with not having a door and asked for three drawers, a hanging rod and a couple of shelves.

I was unable to find any drawer units that would fit so I had to build one from scratch.

Have a look at the process below:

A ton of storage space was created and this became a much better use of the closet.

The hallway closet was similar in that the wall was opened up but then a ton of floor to ceiling shelving was installed.

Two previously almost unusable closets converted into usable space that now hold a TON of stuff.

Last week I posted an article about a bedroom I had done where the large mirrored sliding closet doors were replaced by nicer more functional bi-fold doors.

http://smallspacestyle.org/2014/09/08/another-bedroom-and-closet-makeover/

A woman who I had done some work for in the past read the post and contacted me to do the same work on two of her closets, one in the entry and one in the guest bedroom.

Her sliding doors were floor to ceiling so we had to make a decision about whether to special order 8′ bi-fold doors that would go all the way to the ceiling or go the much less expensive route of framing in the existing closet opening and buying more economical stock doors.

For obvious reasons, we chose the second option. It actually is the preferred option in my mind as we are then able to add some trim to the opening giving it a much nicer look.

Fairly simple although somewhat time consuming, framing in a closet opening is all about measuring twice. Bi-fold are straight forward to install if the framing is done correctly, but can be a huge pain if not.

A few 2X4s, some drywall, compound and paint and the new doors bring the tired entry up to date. The bi-fold doors look amazing with modern stainless steel pulls and are significantly more functional than the old awkward sliding doors.