Adding a closet in a room
Yesterday and today we have been working on Building A Closet in house that was deigned by Architect Royal Barry Wills (1895 – 1962). Wills was a preeminent Boston architect and author. He was the master of the Cape Cod style house, in its Colonial Revival incarnation from the 1930s to 1950s.
The “cape” house is ubiquitous in New England and elsewhere, due in part to its simplicity which sometimes simply means “inexpensive” but also allows for versions that are pure elegance due to their distilled, crystalline nature as a perfectly refined product. Will’s unmatched talent was that of bringing a level of refinement to every level of planning and detail for the cape model.
In 1938 Life magazine selected four modern architects and four traditional architects and had them prepare home designs for families in four income categories. In the category for people with $5,000 to $6,000 incomes, the modern design was by Frank Lloyd Wright and the traditional one by Royal Barry Wills. The family chose the Wills house over the Wright design, and the home was built in Edina, Minnesota.
Houses built to his designs still fetch a premium in the Northeast. This house is no exception, it is well built and has a real nice charm.
The owner may sell the house and one of his bedrooms did not have a closet. Well it did have a closet but a bathroom expansion claimed it. See yesterdays post.
The owner wanted the room to us to build a Closet in order for he room to be qualified as a “bedroom” for resale. This bedroom also had a built in desk and we chose to add the closet here. We removed the desk and framed in a closed in the sloped alcove.
Building A Closet
A 2’6″ by 6’6″ barely fit. For continuity purposes, I wanted to keep the same size doors as the rest of the house so we made it work.
the problem with fitting larger doors into smaller spaces is that when it comes time for finished trim casing, you often have to cut it down. [see below]
Wallboard was applied, seams taped and the drywall seams and tape mudded.
Letting the drywall compound dry overnight before applying additional coats.
Door installed. Look at the tight clearance in the upper right corner.
Trim applied. the top corners had to be clipped off as well as the left door casing ripped down in order to make this work.
Click on photos to enlarge. We reused an old latch style handle to match the rest of the doors in this house.
Finished closet ~ floors washed and ready for homeowner inspection.
The original closet in the room is now a bookcase and is on the opposite side of the bedroom.
~ concord carpenter
See my post on installing wainscoting
source: wikipedia