Making it Legal

As it stands now our upstairs bedroom isn't legal - there's a closet and a window but no door between the "room" and the staircase. Adam and I have been brainstorming plans for this space for a while now - how to include a door while taking the attic ceiling angles into account and how to maintain a decent sized walk-in closet should the next owners want this space as a master. If this were our forever home we'd also be planning on how to incorporate a bath as well, potentially adding a dormer to the roof for added space, but since this isn't we're sticking to the basics.

The closet that is up there now is a decent size, albeit full of dated wall paper and a version of sheetrock from the early 20th century... The biggest problem with this closet though is that the wall comes out halfway into the whole room - taking up sizable space of the only portion of the ceiling that is parallel to the floor.


(Doggie photo bomb.)


Our plan is to take out the front wall of the closet in order to knock it back to the bend in the ceiling, which will allow for a full-sized door to then be placed perpendicular from there with a wall that continues across to the other side of the attic. Here's the floor plan for the existing layout.

 Doing this will take away square footage of the closet so we've decided to also remove the back side wall of the closet and stretch it further into the bedroom - the closet will be narrower now but it will be longer also.

Here's the catch - the small square in the corner of the existing closet is the HVAC duct that goes from the basement to the roof, and attached to that is the duct that runs along the floor into the eaves. These are things that have to stay in place, so in order to work around that we have to get a little creative.


The HVAC chase is currently drywalled on two sides so we're going to continue that around a third side before turning from that to create the actual closet wall.











It will create a small little alcove before you enter the bedroom door but we've done the measurements and it doesn't appear that it will impede anything like moving large pieces of furniture in and out. A pocket door will also be incorporated as there won't be any room for a closet door to then swing out into the room from where it is. We chose to keep the closet door on this wall for two reasons:
 - I wanted to leave the wall space opposite of the bedroom window as open as possible for a dresser or art work or both.
 - We wanted to leave the option of installing a shelving system on that short wall to the right of the pocket door.

With a plan in hand we started the demo - first step was removing the closet door and the trim as well as the rod and shelf that were in there.


Next we started taking down the interior walls of the closet - only to discover some really beautiful, super wide rough sawn lumber lurking behind. In order to remove the boards carefully in case we wanted to use them for something else down the road, Adam cut into the drywall on the other side and we popped them free that way.


After removing everything from the interior we worked to disassemble the rest of the drywall and the existing framing so we had a blank canvas. This photo was taken right before we took off the front wall of the closet but it still gives you an idea of the space we have to work with now.


Up next will be sanding down the pine floor where the walls used to be in order to prep them for matching to the existing finish when we're done. We'll also be framing the new closet out and doing the electrical so hopefully we have an update for you early next week.

What are your plans for the weekend? Going to try and get out and soak up some the last of the sunshine or are you eager to dive into a new project? Have you started gathering your decorative gourds yet? I still need to get myself some white pumpkins...



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