We have been scheming for a while now about opening up the closet that currently opens up into our living room to the other side, our bedroom. This would make much more sense - two closets in the master bedroom, none in the living room. We're expanding the other closet opening to give us 6' wide closets (times two) along the back wall of our bedroom.
We bought 4 doors that are 96"x36" since we have 108" to work with height-wise in our house, we figured the more we could open up vertically the more space we could use. These doors are huge. And since they're real wood, they're heavy. Chris estimated they're about 100 lbs each. We got a great deal on them at the Building Materials Resource center in Roxbury. It's a Coop where people drop off unwanted building materials (we have lots of these in our basement, for example), and other people can buy them for pennies. We spent $160 total on the 4 doors, which if you've looked into purchasing wood doors, is ridiculously cheap. They're already painted white, and I have plans to repaint them and possibly wallpaper them to give them a little more pizzazz.
We're going to attach them using a barn door track, which attaches to the outside of the wall frame on the top and can hold a lot of weight. It also allows us to use the full depth of the closet space, which is valuable for a house as old as ours. Most people who have lived in Cambridge can attest to the fact that you can't take it for granted that a modern-day regulation hangar will fit in many closets you come across in these old houses. Fortunately, ours have, but we'd like to get a full 22" of depth so we can use standard closet organizers from Home Depot or Ikea, and not have to do something custom.
On the living room side we're going to cut out the door frame and put up new dry wall to cover the hole. We're then going to fill that wall with bookshelves. Ah, bliss, a wall of books. If we have enough money left over, we may try to install a gas fireplace where the existing non-working fireplace resides. Don't worry, we'll get professional help to install the fireplace.
Chris bought a new saw, and has started ripping off the drywall in our bedroom, which turns out is old-fashioned horse-hair plaster over lath boards. The wall is also two layers think - it has a 3" gap in the middle, which explains why our apartment is so sound-proof (I literally have to yell at the top of my lungs to get Chris to hear me if I'm in the bedroom and he's in the living room, even if the door is open). I know this stuff is supposed to be valuable, and historic, and that we're supposed to preserve it and all that, but it's also really gross. There are clumps of horse hair mixed in with the plaster, and it is rather unsavory.
The bedroom is also developing a nice layer of dust, despite Chris' wall of plastic tarp he hung carefully. That I think is the worst part about this, but I know it's a part of home repair that I just have to deal with. It's temporary, and in the end, we'll have nice closets that actually work for us!
