Open shelves make it much easier to store children's toys and clothes.
While every bedroom can benefit from a closet, a child can't reach the same heights that an adult can. One solution is to build a child height closet. You don't have to tear out the normal closet to do it, just make adjustments to the closet you already have; after all, your kids will grow up quickly and you'll want to adjust the closet back to teen size in a few years. One big change is to remove the doors on the closet. They are a big invitation to pinched fingers and are often hard to move for a child. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Remove the closet doors. Remove sliding track doors by lifting up the door and singing the bottom of the door out. Use a chisel and hammer to lift the pin and remove doors on pivot hinges. Position the chisel under the lip of the pin at a 30-degree-angle and strike the wood end of the chisel with the hammer driving the pin up and out of the hinge. You can lift folding doors out of the mounting hardware or unscrewed from the frame.
2. Measure the height of the closet ceiling and the width of the closet side to side.
3. Decide how much of the closet you want to dedicate to hanging clothes and how much is available for building cubby storage. One consideration is that you can have two or even three clothes bars on the hanger side of the closet because your child's clothes are shorter than an adult's.
4. Cut one closet dividing board the height of the closet ceiling from the 1-by-14-inch board. Install the board in the closet, perpendicular to the back of the wall -- and parallel to the side walls -- using four L-brackets at the top and four at the bottom.
5. Measure the distance between the central board and the wall on the side where you are putting the cubby. Cut four boards this length for your horizontal dividers. Cut one 4-foot board for every 13 inches of cubby width, rounding down, for your vertical dividers.
6. Divide the distance between the divider board and the wall by the number of vertical dividers you cut to determine how far apart to put each vertical divider. Measure and mark a line straight across each of the horizontal dividers where your vertical dividers will go. Cut a 3/4-inch slot half way through the horizontal dividers centered on the lines you drew.
7. Measure and draw a line every foot on the vertical dividers. Cut a 3/4-inch slot half way through the vertical dividers centered on the lines you drew.
8. Assemble the cubbies by inserting the vertical slots into the horizontal slots on the dividers, sliding the boards together until the edges are flush. Fasten the ends of the horizontal dividers to the walls and central board using L-brackets.
9. Install the spring-loaded clothes hanging bar. Press the bar together, position it in the closet at the height and location desired between the divider board and the wall and release the pressure.
10. Sand the edges of the boards with 200-grit sandpaper.
Tags: vertical dividers, horizontal dividers, board wall, height closet, your vertical dividers, 4-inch slot, 4-inch slot half