Old closet issue

Folks:

A neighbor asked me for advice with an issue she is having with a closet at her house. When I checked it out I was amazed! The closet is extremely wide and narrow. If you try and place clothes hangers in it in the traditional fashion you can't get the door shut! It looks like the previous owners just placed hooks on the wall and used it in that fashion. Don't know how in the world they obtained access to the extreme left and right sides of this space! Need some insight on how we could make use of this space.

Thanks,

Jeff

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Permalink Reply by Sean Maher on May 5, 2010 at 8:47pm

Maybe shelves that go into the far ends and can slide out into the open middle? Good question.

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Permalink Reply by Phil on May 5, 2010 at 9:38pm

I have 2 shallow closets at our 1895 house, along with an even more shallow pair of wardrobes. Each is used differently, so I will describe the four strategies with a level of detail that is sure to bore anyone without closet and storage issues. We are lucky to have 9 closets in the house, so we have some flexibility in our use strategies.

Closet #1 is in my bedroom suite. It is 18" deep at best, 16"-17" where there are mouldings in place. [Yes, they cased the inside of the door frame with fancy moulding in a room that is 18" deep!] While it was originally a closet with hooks --I think that they all were back then--it now has a bar. Here, standard hangers work, but in some cases they have to be made a little diagonal, rather than being perpendicular with the closet wall. It goes about a foot and a half either direction from the door, so it is a bit hard to access deeply in those directions. Similarly, accessing the full height of its 9.5 foot ceiling is next to impossible. I have one shelf above the hanging clothes, and I pile sweaters and sweatshirts in stacks with a bit of a Tower of Babel situation.

Closet #2 is in our bathroom and was at least 5 feet wide, with the door not at all centered. It was also very shallow and the far right could not be accessed if anything was in the middle of it. In that case, we subdivided it into 2 closets, each with floor to as high as we could get with shelves (we made them narrower higher up, so that we could reach past one to get to the next.). We store towels, medicines, cleaning supplies and tp in that closet now. To access the right half, we cut a full door hole in the hallway outside of our bathroom, again with bottom to top full width shelves. I bought a close match door that was very narrow (27") and could fit the space that we stole from the regular closet, and we now use it as a linen closet. We had some matching casing from a custom mill job, so it is now a perfect woodwork match (but no casing on the inside!).

Wardrobe #1 is in my bedroom and is only 12" deep. In this case it has 2 bars, each perpendicular to the wardrobe, and anchored to the back only. Hangers can then be hung on the bars left to right. The catch here is that the wardrobe is slightly less than 2 hangers wide, so I can't use regular hangers. In the wardrobe I use only smaller hangers to make them fit. I spent several years buying antique wooden hangers at thrift stores, which were only 25 cents each. The full size ones we put in our coat closet downstairs, and the shorter ones I use in the wardrobe so that I can put 2 abreast. Also, I hang pants there using trouser hangers that are always very short. Kids hangers or home-shortened wire hangers
would also have worked.

Wardrobe #2 is also only 12" deep, or perhaps 14". My wife uses that one and has modified it to be only bottom to top full width shelves. She stacks various shirts and sweaters and the like on those shelves, and it holds a ton of stuff that is fully visible when both doors are pulled open.

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Permalink Reply by Linda on June 7, 2010 at 2:24pm

I have the narrow closet issue. I know people were much smaller at the turn 20th century, used hooks for clothes (I can feel the covered over holes in the molding) and didn't have as many clothes as we do now. We only have two closets (small house built 1900), but fortunately we have a wonderful attic, with hardwood floors yet!

However, the bedroom closet space is very tight and the door just closes. I was wondering about old clothes hangers, and thinking they had to be narrower.

Question for Phil: How wide are the antique wooden hangers that you found? (And thanks for the detailed information, too.)

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Permalink Reply by Chris on May 7, 2010 at 12:35pm

Phil,

Do you have a small bedroom that you can convert into a walk-in closet? I had the same situation in my 1912 four-square; one bedroom didn't even have a closet, so we converted a small bedroom or sewing room into a walk-in closet. Worked great, and the small closets we did have we used for night gowns, pillows and stuff like that. Good luck!

Chris

Attachments:

Closet.jpg, 4 KB

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Permalink Reply by jane on May 7, 2010 at 6:27pm

hangers weren't invented until about the early 1900's. Before that people used hooks, drawers, trunks.

I grew up in a house with long skinny closets. Mine had a 2' wide door, was about 8' long and 16" deep. It had a pole front to back on each side. hooks right across from the door. Behind the poles my mother made shelves about a ft deep across the width for storage of things - sweaters, party shoes, boxes of 'treasures', an extra blanket. There was also a light with a pull string so I could see what was behind the clothes. We also had a full attic for off-season, and younger sisters who inherited everything as soon as I outgrew it. Storage was not a problem.
The space was great for hiding in when we played Sardines.

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Permalink Reply by Phil on May 7, 2010 at 7:12pm

@Jane: I hid in the far right of my wife's closet once for hide and seek, and no one ever found me hidden behind her dresses. Another hiding place is so top secret, that not only have I never been found there in extended family games, but I can't reveal it to anyone! Old houses are custom made for hide and seek and sardines. We also use our attic for off season storage, using those gigantic tupperwares that they sell at the grocery for Christmas decoration storage. I hear that modern attics are unusable, because pre-engineered trusses make them unusable. That is a shame.

@Chris: We are actually awash in closet space, so no need to sacrifice a room. I have seen other houses with such a need, however.

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Graves on November 9, 2011 at 6:22pm

The closet space in my house is limited in all but our master bedroom. The other bedroom closets are 14 inches deep and about six feet wide. I've collected many hooks from the closets and removed the old rods and knobs that were used to hang clothes. My idea was to create a built in unit with drawers on the bottom and shelves on top with double glass doors. Has anyone done this with success and do you mind not having a place to hang items other than a rack or wardrobes?

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Permalink Reply by jane on November 11, 2011 at 5:24pm

I would mind tremendously. My stuff would end up on a chair rumpled and hidden...

But I do not live there so it doesn't matter.

If you plan to sell the house any time soon, no closet might be a deterrent to a potential buyer.

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Permalink Reply by Phil on November 11, 2011 at 5:48pm

And if you do it, then be sure to very carefully lablel the removed wooden door and attach all removed hinges etc. to that door and put it in a dry part of the attic or basement. Maybe include the removed bar and hardware in the same stash.