Finishing up My Son's Walk-in Closet

My son and I installed the closet organizer we built last week. The diagram below shows the layout...



As I stated in an earlier post, this is about as small as you can get for any sort of workable walk-in closet. That being said, there is actually a lot of room in there with the cabinetry installed.

We did a slightly larger one of these for my daughter (8' x 4'), and I am sold on this design. It seems so much more functional than the standard two feet deep closets. It also takes up significantly less wall space within the room. If I every design another house, there will be walk-ins, at least small ones, in every bedroom.

Here are the shelves on the left side, with the hanger bar below. We put the bar out 16" from the wall, instead of the normal 12". This allows for my son to store stuff along that back wall.


The right side now holds the dresser, and all the slides have been adjusted as needed. The next step is to affix the drawer fronts and hardware.


A tip for building your own drawers using drawer slides...

You want the drawers to slide in and out without any binding or slipping. Binding comes from the drawer being too tight or not aligned correctly, and slipping comes from the drawer bring too loose.

I make the drawer 1/16" to 1/8" narrower than the opening, minus the requirements for the slides. In this case, the openings are 34", and the slides take 1" - so the drawers are 32 7/8" wide. This extra little bit allows me to shim the rails to get them aligned and the correct width. I use washers between the rails and the cabinets for shims.

Small Walk-in Closet for my Son's Room

We completed the sheetrock, texturing and painting in my son's room today. As part of the remodel work we are doing, we converted part of a former hallway into a walk-in closet for the room. The old closet is going to become an alcove for the adjacent bathroom. Sometimes I think I like to play musical chairs with the floor plan...


The hall was just over 3 feet wide (37 inches), and I placed the wall so the closet width would be 7'6". This is about the smallest walk-in closet possibe. He should have ample space in at the door to walk-in an turn around. One side has a dresser and shelves, while the other side has closet rods and shelves. You could get the same functional space with a 6" wide 2" deep closet, but the wide opening would take up a lot more wall space. Also, the back wall of the walk-in will have hooks to hang things.

My son desgined the closet organizer, and we both worked on building it. Here are a couple of pictures...


He decided on a black ebony stain, which my daughter also did in her room. It looks good on the pine face frames.


I am hoping to get these installed tomorrow so we can start carpeting.