If your living area offers little closet space, you might struggle with finding enough room to store clothing and keep your home free of piles of folded clothes. Building a cabinet-style closet can be an effective solution for obtaining extra clothes storage. Before you complete your cabinet-style closet, you need to build a frame to ensure that is structurally stable. Building the frame for this type of closet is relatively straightforward, and requires only common shop tools. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Measure the available floor space and ceiling height in your bedroom or other room with a measuring tape to determine the appropriate width, height and depth of the cabinet-style closet.
2. Cut four sections of 2-by-4-inch lumber to the width of the closet, and four sections to the depth, with a circular saw. Miter both ends of each section at 45-degree angles with a power miter saw.
3. Assemble two width and two depth sections into a rectangle to form the bottom of the cabinet frame. Check the corners with a carpenter's square to ensure that the corners form 90-degree angles. Repeat this process with the remaining width and depth sections to form the top of the cabinet frame.
4. Drill pilot holes through the corners of the top and bottom frame. Insert and tighten 4-inch wood screws through the pilot holes with an electric screwdriver.
5. Cut four sections of 2-by-4-inch lumber 3 inches shorter than the height of the cabinet frame with a circular saw to form the frame posts. Stand the top and bottom frame sections on edge and place one post on the floor at each corner. Drill pilot holes through the top and bottom sections into the ends of the posts, and insert and tighten 4-inch wood screws through the pilot holes. Turn the assembly over and attach the remaining two posts to the opposite corners in the same manner.
6. Stand the cabinet frame on the bottom frame section. Measure the interior distance between the posts on the sides of the frame from front to back. Cut two sections of 2-by-4-inch lumber to this measurement -- these sections form the supports for the hanging bar.
7. Place the bar support sections between the posts on the sides of the frame, about 2 inches from the top of the frame. Drill pilot holes through the frame into the ends of the support sections, and insert and tighten 4-inch wood screws through the pilot holes.
8. Mark the horizontal and vertical center of the support sections. Using a drill equipped with a 1-inch-wide paddle bit, drill a hole at this mark through both support sections. Cut a 1-inch-diameter dowel to the width of the cabinet with a circular saw and insert it through the holes in the support sections.
Tags: pilot holes, support sections, cabinet frame, 2-by-4-inch lumber, 4-inch wood