What would do with limited space?

15 years ago

Currently on the drawing board is a linen closet in our guest bath that will only be 13 inches deep. This makes the guest closet on the other side of the common wall only 22 inches deep. Both are almost 6 feet long. I know that neither is the perfect size or even ideal, but also neither of these spaces will ever be used on a long term basis by us. We tend to have guests about two weekends out of every month.

I suppose I need the linen side more because I will have to store towels, extra toilet paper and cleaning supplies for the bathroom. A dry walled linen closet is a lot cheaper for us to build than cabinetry. So my question is should I leave the dimensions as is or should I steal an extra inch from the guest closet making it 21 inches deep? I know a clothes closet should be 24 inches but believe it or not the 75 year old house we are renting now has closets that are only 19 inches deep and yes, full-sized hangers do fit in them...barely. On the other hand I also currently store towels on a shelf that is only 8 inches deep and they overhang it to about 12 inches. So I'm pretty sure that I can squeeze the towels into the 13 inch deep linen closet.

Elimenating the linen closet would leave me with nothing but a 27 inch sink base for storage and would make the empty guest closet 41 inches deep by 6 feet long. Reducing the depth of the closet would leave an awkward jag in the room. I would prefer to have a continuous straight wall.

Bottom line: does my proportion (of 13/22) seem to be the best with what I've got to work with? Thanks for your insight.

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Comments (8)

suero
15 years ago
You can fit the towels into an 11" deep closet. Give your guest closet the full 24" depth. You won't regret it.
Yes, you can squeeze clothes into a narrower closet, but is such a royal pain in the @$$.

To fit towels into a narrow closet, roll them up and stand them on end.
ncamy
Original Author
15 years ago
Mmmm OK. Thanks for the perspective. I really hadn't considered expanding the closet since no one will ever actually hang clothes in it. (It's basically there for resell.)

BTW sorry about the misspelling above. That should be eliminating.
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buckheadhillbilly
15 years ago
ncamy, I have a similar space where we are doing a built in linen press. The bottom half will be for clothes and the top for towels and tp. Maybe this schematic will help.

Ours will be 14" deep.
ncamy
Original Author
15 years ago
OMG buckhead, that's beautiful! I would love to be able to do that and maybe we can eventually down the road, but for now I think we are going to have to make do with bifold doors and shelves. (Although when I mentioned the words, "wire shelves," my DH quickly nixed that idea.)
aa62579
15 years ago
Would it be possible to make the wall in between them not straight? We have a similar situation in an area in the house my parents are building. They chose to make the guest closet have about a 2' area that is shallower and will have shelves, and then a deeper area for hanging clothes. Opposite is true on the other side - small deep area, but more shallow area.

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Kind of hard to do without having your floorplan and seeing how everything is situated, but if your area is approximately 3' x 6' and a rectangle, this is what I am talking about. The green would be the guest closet, yellow for the linen. Red on second drawing was just to note shelves and hanging rod.

If this is for eventual resale, I think it is even MORE important that the guest closet have at least a portion of it at 24" or more. I consider 24" bare minimum. In a linen closet, I don't think you would have to have as much area that is deep. It's nice for storing bulk TP, but I find that a lot of my stuff just gets lost in the back of our cabinet that is deep.
ncamy
Original Author
15 years ago
aa: You've given me an idea. Currently the plan is to have the wall in between the closet and the linen closet be 6 inches thick to accommodate a pocket door, but it doesn't have to be 6 inches for the entire length of the closet(s.) We could drop it back to 4 inches past the pocket door. Does anyone know if doing such will increase my framing costs much? I'm trying to keep everything straight to reduce costs. This is starting to look like it will be a bare bones build.
mythreesonsnc
15 years ago
Are all of your air returns on your plan already? If not, (mine weren't), the first spaces that got eaten up were bits of these closets! Places where I had 2 door closets ended up being 1 door closets with an air return. Annoying, but I guess they have to go somewhere. Hopefully, yours are on the plan and this will not be lost space, but just in case.....
pps7
15 years ago
I was going to suggest what aa did. A deep area in the bathroom would be nice to put a hamper.