Want to see some pictures of a messy room? How about a messy closet? I love looking at beautiful pics of peoples homes, but that is not happening on this blog.
Every few months I go through the daunting task of decluttering my daughters room and trying to organize it. Each time feels like the movie "Ground Hog Day", like, wasn't I just doing this yesterday? She has a decent sized closet and its time to really utilize all of the space in there. First order of business is to flip the door.
With the door opening into the closet (as it currently is), only 1/3 of the space is really usuable. If the door can open into the room we'll gain almost 9 square feet of accessible closet space. Worth it? I think so. Can I flip, or rehang a door? I'm not sure. Here is where I am right now.
This is the usuable closet space right now, pretty much all you can see when the door opens into the closet:
I'd already removed the door when I took this picture but the door swings open to the right side of the shelves. All the floor space is taken up by the door swing.
This is the potential space we'll gain with the door flipped (door opening into the room). I put another shelf (shown to the right inside the closet) that is not accessible at all. The few times I actually used this shelf I had to 1, step into the closet, 2, find a sliver of space that I could stand in and have room for the door to close, and 3, shut the door completely. Then I had to do the reverse to get out.
So I've been reading online about how to reverse a door, how to rehang a door and how to install a door. Looks like I have 3 options.
1. I can remove the whole door jamb and casing and buy a prehung interior door and install it. This is what Rachel did recently.
2. I can remove the whole door jamb, pull out all of the nails and flip it around and rehang it (if I don't damage it too much).
3. I can just remove the door and rehang the hinges on the other side.
Last night I started my exploratory research. I first wanted to see how easy it would be to take off the door jamb and casings.
What a mess! This took me about an hour:
Options 1 and 2 involve removing this whole jamb. There are a ton of nails to saw through and then pull out. I don't own a nail gun and compressor. I did lots of gouging of the jamb and casing while pulling this off, not sure if I can really reuse it. Also, not sure what kind of saw to use to cut through those nails. Will my jigsaw work?
If I choose option 3 it requires creating another hole for the door latch. Also, notching for the hardware.
In the meantime I have a door in my hallway. Complete with One Direction posters.
I'm going to give Option 3 a try. I am really not feeling confident about this but I feel like I should at least give it a shot. I'll keep you posted.
----Adrienne
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