House Project: Coat Closet
Alternatively titled “Why We Purposefully Want a Smaller Coat Closet.” This is part of the FHA 203k work.
There’s a lot of goofy things going on at our house* – things that obviously aren’t “make or break” since we bought the place, but things we will be fixing now and over the years.
And one of those things is (was, really!) the coat closet.
Foyer, before
Us trying to use the coat closet as is – ha ha, my dad moved all the coat hooks from the left side to the right side when he visited (so coats didn’t hang over the shoes) then that wall was demolished five days later. I told him all his hard work was for NOTHING! Ha.
We have a double door entry to our house, with a sidelight on each side. And for whatever reason, the coat closet was encompassing one of the sidelights on the inside. So we had this HUGE coat closet, but it was odd that you could only see one sidelight in the foyer, and that from the outside, you could see in to the coat closet via that window. It made my inner architect crazy.
The window inside the closet
So we had the contractor push the wall back behind the sidelight, to reclaim it for the foyer.
Already looks better!
Sloppy in progress photo, but you can see the extra light in the foyer
Moving this wall has presented a few issues, of course:
- The closet can’t be the typical 2′ depth, because of the location of the window trim from the back (garage) wall (which is already furred out, unfortunately). It’s a couple of inches short, so our coats won’t have as much space as a normal closet, but they’ll fit.
- The previous owners didn’t leave any extra floor tiles in the house (we did find some pretty mosaic tiles though), so we had to try to match the demolished floor. And they put the floor at an angle, so we need a bunch of tiles. We couldn’t match the color exactly, but matched the pattern. We don’t want to redo the whole floor because that would require us to figure out the entire feel we want the house to have over time, and we are SO not there yet. I plan to use a rug to break up the difference in color. Ha. Now you all know my little secret.
But! We think it looks much better this way!
We’ll pick out a new closet door handle, and get to the tile in early March when it comes in.
Much more open!
*We’d love to have a history of the house and all the additions/work on it!
Themocracy
This is definitely an improvement! It’s so weird that one of the side windows would have been inside the closet. A coat closet was one of the things we wanted to make sure we had when we bought a house. There were a lot of places we looked at that didn’t have a closet by the entrance at all and I knew that would have been a mess for us.
Strange not to have one, right? You realize as you look at houses, that some have TONS of closets, and some seem to have none at all, and be missing the crucial ones – like a coat closet. I need to hide that mess, too 😉
That looks soooo much better! If you have side windows by the front door, I’d think both need to be out in the open. Symmetry!
Thanks! And, EXACTLY! What were the previous occupants thinking?!
That looks a lot better! I can’t imagine why they covered up that window! So strange.
When I was living in the city, a spacious coat closet (or one at all, ha ha) was like a dream! I had a coat stand for several years, then put some hooks up outside the front door of my last apartment. But it’s just not the same. And even now, our coat closet doubles as dog food/treats storage (which means every time we get out a coat Heidi thinks it’s snack time).
Thanks! It was so strange! I am happy this fit in to the FHA 203k work 🙂
Someone suggested a coat stand to me, or hooks, which yeah, work, but it’s so nice to have an enclosed space, and the floor space, like you mentioned! I keep a lot more in there than coats! (Not Data’s food though, ha ha ha!)
That asymmetry would drive me crazy, too! It looks so much better with your improvements.
Great choice to fix that sidelight – so bizarre that they had it in the coat closet!
WHY ON EARTH WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT. My goodness. What a huge improvement!!
Love the change! My dad is an architect and sometimes family/friends ask him to look at plans they have or to give suggestions on what they’re doing to renovate. (He doesn’t design houses, but can obviously look at plans.) It’s hilarious when he just shakes his head and says, “I have no idea why they would do that.” Like window/coat closet thing – I can just picture him shaking his head.
Thanks! Ha! I bet your dad has seen some fuuuuuuuuunky stuff!!!!!!! You should show him this, ha!
The new, smaller closet looks great, even with the mismatched tiles. (I wouldn’t have noticed.) Did the previous owners build the house that way, or had they changed something to put the skylight in the closet?
We don’t have as much of the house history as we’d like but I am assuming the closet was originally not there or as we have it now, and one of the sets of owners (I guess we’re the fourth owners?) after made it all funky like this!
Looks lovely! This reminds me of all of the changes my architect dad made to his home over the past couple of years when he was slowly renovating. Around 25 years of living in the same home had his architect brain going crazy about all of the stuff he wanted to change. At least you don’t have to hire anyone to draw up plans! 😉 I can’t wait to see all of the finished projects! Your home is already beautiful and it’s going to be truly stunning when you’re finished.
That is cool that he is making the changes he wants to!!!
Yes, it is nice to understand it and be able to share what I am thinking with a sketch. I can’t stamp anything though, so I hope we don’t get to that point. Ha ha.
Thank you!!!! 🙂