Is Your Closet Built Wrong...mine Was.

Lisa L Hall
by Lisa L Hall
7 Materials
$2
30 Minutes
Easy
The guest bedroom is always the last to receive love in my house. As long as the sheets are clean and the bed is made I'm pretty much good with that room.

After knowing that the closet was built wrong for the past three years I finally decided to fix it.

The best part is that I can reuse all of the pieces that are already in the closet so there is very little to purchase.

So you will see in the photos that my closet was not put together correctly. I have yet to figure out what anyone was thinking while building this closet...I'm guessing it was an inside joke with the contractor.

The doors to my closet are great. Double doors for lots of access to the closet. The shelf is up high enough to allow for two rods to hang clothing.

They left one rod by itself which is great for coats or garment bags.

This is were things went terribly wrong: The builder put the single rod at the opening of the double door. The double rod is behind a wall...yep behind a wall. So....It seems to me that I would be better off with double the amount of hanging space in an area I can get to. Call me funny that way.

I came up with a simple flip and fix. Literally flip and fix.

I guess for a 30 minute fix it's not the end of the world but still something that didn't need to be fixed if it would have been done right the first time. I also can't complain that the only thing I needed to buy was a $2.00 piece of wood.

Here is the single rod. It's great. Lots of storage room under it and great access....have you figured out the problem yet?
Yep...that's the door and there are the two rods for hanging clothes. I don't know about you but trying to get my clothes from behind that wall doesn't sound like it's very user friendly. This is also why this room became the guest room. Neither of my boys wanted to deal with that debacle.


So step one was to take out the rod. That is simple, it's not attached to anything, just siting in the rod holders on the sides of the walls.



Step two was to remove the rod holders (sorry I don't know the technical name). Those just needed a screwdriver and they were now free from the dark side of the closet.


Now came the interesting part. As you can see from the photo there is a panel of wood dividing the closet. I plan on flipping the rod to the other side...but is it the same distance on each side?


Of course not. That would have made this redo a 15 minute job and who wants that. Ha Ha.
So here is the divider...It serves no purpose other than holding the rod. Not sure why they made it so long. It could have been cut at the point of the wood slat that they attached the rod holder to. But that's why I'm not a contractor.
Since I knew I was going to be doing more than just a simple 15 minute flip, I decided to make a few more alterations. Since I'm going to be using the portion behind the wall for storage now, I wanted to get rid of part of that divider wall. I still needed part of it to hold the rod so I found my spot and started cutting. A battery operated saw is a must for this. I cannot imagine how long it would have taken with a hand saw.


Did you know that these types of dividers are not even secured to your wall with nails or screws...Nope just glue. A few hits with a hammer and my bottom section was off.
So now this is what I have left. I don't like the raw edge so the quickest and easiest is just to sand it down a bit. Simply and easy. I'll throw some paint on that wall and no one will every know what was there.
So now that I'm done with my larger part of the redo, I decided to move on to attaching the rod holders. I'm going to reuse the ones that were already in the closet.


So once I had measured out where on the wall I needed the holder, I marked it and then hammered a nail into the wall. Yeah...I hoped I would hit a stud....Ha Ha..That only happens in the movies.


So once I got the nail in the wall (no stud) I took the screw I plan on using and screwed it into the wall to create a hole for my anchor. Just a little trick I picked up along the way.
A nice drywall anchor will do the trick. Make sure your anchor is the right size for your screw. Too big and it won't hold and too small, you'll break it and the screw will not tighten.
So one side is done. Now on to the side where I had to get a little more creative.
I love pilot holes to help screws go in faster. I did add a bit of Gorilla Glue just to be on the safe side but it's truly not needed since I'm screwing the board into the divider board.
I always have screws on hand. This just happens to be deck screw so great for a wood repair job. The other hole will be for the other pole socket (yep I had to look it up to get the actual name)
Now I'm ready to install the rod and call it a win.
Now this is what a closet should look like. I put hangers on each rod so you can see that clothes will fit easily on each rod.


And yes...emergency lantern work great for working in a closet. Ha ha.
Suggested materials:
  • Wooden rod   (already in close)
  • Pole Socket set   (already in closet)
  • Battery saw   (On hand)
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