A Closet for Our Girl!

Besides working on the kitchen, we also have been busy with our girl's closet.

Her closet was 3'x3'. As the old closet was right behind the stove wall, we figured that we might as well tear the old closet down and give our girl a wider, although shallower, new closet. That way, it can be easier to find stuff, right?

This is the only before photo I have:

The closet during the demo phase. You can see the kitchen right behind it :)

Photographed from the kitchen side. That door frame is all that was left of the old closet.

We tore down the book case, too:

The bookcase is to the left of the photo (hard to see, sorry!)

Bye-bye bookcase

The closet and bookcase were reframed. The book case is now split into a shallow book case in the girl's room side and an appliance garage on the kitchen side. The closet is wider and shallower: 2'x6'.

We mudded and taped the closet and the bookcase. D. did the work for the closet. I did the bookcase because it was such a tight and small space that only I could fit in it.

Then, came the day the closet was painted and the doors were hung. It was so very exciting!
That was in December 2012.

The new bookcase, the new closet and...

The new closet doors!

Of course, we needed to put casing around the closet doors: both on the outside of the closet and the inside of the closet. What??? You have to do all that? Sadly, yes. These are the things we never even thought about nor noticed about closet and doors.

So, the research for the "right" style of the casing and trims began. Of course, it took a while to do that. I hope you aren't surprised by now at how long it took us to research, plan and choose cabinetry, closet doors, faucet, sink, countertop, window, and why not, casing...

This is now March 2013. We just finished the outside casing of the closet about a week ago :)

We had a few false starts. But we finally settled on the decorative moulding over the top of the doors and simple craftsman casing all around the doors. Like this:

Yup, just hold it there for another hour, D!

Starting to look like a real closet!

The first nail to the casing

Uh-oh, the casing on the left couldn't stay flat on the wall

But, the casing on the right jamb was fine

The problem was:

The left jamb was bowed behind the wall a little, and the sheetrock was a bit out from the jamb

 The solution was to rabbet the casing like this:

And, problem solved. The casing now sits perfectly against the wall and door jamb:

voila!

It's time to cut the top decorative piece above the doors. Of course, we cut wood with a sharp tool at night:) Kids, please don't try this at home.

The closet is now completely cased and trimmed on the outside. I thought D. did a beautiful job.

What a gift for our darling girl, a closet hand-made by her dad!