J + A : Entryway Closet

From J:

Enough with the furniture posts for a time: now we talk about DIY house upgrades.

Problem: our house has no entryway closet.

Temporary solution: I added a closet bar to our old entertainment center and repurposed it as a wardrobe. This was a decent temporary solution, in all honesty.

Real solution: danggit, just build a new entryway closet, J, and stop being such a lazy bum.

The real solution was forced on us by our recent acquisition of ~1200 square feet of new bamboo flooring (but that's another post). Order of operations forces me to rip out old carpet, build a closet, then install floors, rather than install floors, rip out new floors where the closet will go, build a closet, then install new floors again. Though, if I was billing by the hour, I'd want to do the latter.

Before we started: just look at this wall, with its lack of entry closet. Pitiful. We debated whether the closet should go on this wall or the wall with our entryway furniture on it and decided this one made more sense. For dimensions, we wanted it as wide as possible and deep enough to accommodate our largest coats (which our bedroom closets weren't quite able to do). Internal rough dimensions: 71 inches wide (six feet less drywall), 2 feet deep.

First run for supplies: studs and doors. Doors are for a 60 inch opening and we went with solid wood, because I insist on solid wood whenever possible. Insert obligatory comment about having an SUV here.

First, I cut away the old carpet and removed the baseboards. Then it was time for the rough framing, which I had done in about 6 hours. The side walls are secured with concrete anchors through the footers into the slab, screwed into the trusses through the header, and anchored into the back wall. Since the door's dimensions are so huge relative to the front area (and that's not a bad thing), the front wall construction is almost entirely solid wood by the time the various king, jack, and header studs are put in place. I learned a lot about what different framing things are called researching for this build. While the bare studs were up I rerouted the hall light switch from what was now the back of the closet to the hallway.

We got some drywall and installed it. Man, drywall is messy and I hate it. Greenboard because the boards cost an insignificant amount more and they're water resistant, so why not? Door casing was installed in about 30 minutes, and then I mounted the doors for a test fit. Aw yiss, it's basically a closet at this point. This concluded the first weekend of the project.

Next was more drywall work. I got to try my hand at taping and mudding corners (both interior and exterior). This entire process is messy, frustrating, and tedious. Coats were alternated on the horizontal and vertical seams because that gives the cleanest results in the end. Three coats on each seam, using progressively wider feathering and thinner mud each time. Sand between coats. The professionals use hot-set mud that they mix from powder for the first and maybe second coat, since it speeds things up dramatically, but as I'm not a pro I used all purpose compound and waited 24 hours between each coat. This whole process took about 2 weeks to complete, but in the end things looked pretty good. For an amateur, that is. I would not want to work with drywall for a full time job.

Things start looking real finished real fast now. Primed and painted in a day. Flat white on the interior and Edgecombe Gray on the exterior to match the rest of the living room and hallway. Shelf and closet bar added. Trim work around the door. Paint and caulk all the trim. Paint the doors. And just like that, a finished closet!