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what to do with closet built-in

14 years ago

The house we just purchased has a master closet for clothes, but no linen closet servicing the master bathroom. Don't know where these people kept their towels and sheets. Inside the smallish master closet is a fairly tall oak built-in with many drawers. I do not want to keep my sheets/towels in drawers, since I am too short to see inside of half of them. To convert just half this built-in to a cabinet-style with a couple of shelves would cost $450 (estimates from two different cabinet guys). My question is: how weird would it be to remove the built-in altogether and just build, in its place, a normal linen closet with a door inside this master closet? Would that be cheaper? Does anyone have any other suggestions? Thanks for your help.

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Comments (5)

stjamesb
14 years ago
Is there linen closet anywhere on the same floor? My previous house and the current one don't have linen closet in the master bedroom. We just use the linen closet down the hall. Not knowing your taste so I am going out on a limb here, if building a cabinet is too much, what about using wire shell from places like The Container store? for just a corner of the master closet? Do you need a door to close in your linen?
deanie1
Original Author
14 years ago
Yes, there is another linen closet in the house, but it is on the opposite end and serves the bathroom and two bedrooms on that end of the house.

"Do you need a door to close in your linen?" Good question! I don't know -- How would it look to a future buyer if you walked into the master clothes closet and saw lots of sheets, towels, blankets, etc. just on open shelves. Opinions?
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stjamesb
14 years ago
I've been looking at a lot of houses recently and I don't look too closely at people's walk-in closet. I just glanced to judge the size. As long as the closet is not stuffed so much that I can't see wall, ceiling and floor, I was ok with seeing people's belonging. But that's just me. When we put our house up for sale, we got a small storage unit and brought anything that we don't plan to use immediately into the storage unit. You just move into the house, how long do you plan to stay since you are worried about how would it look to the future buyers already? If you don't plan to stay too long, would you get that $450 back? If you plan to stay long and the sights of sheets and towels bother you then do what you like.
Billl
14 years ago
Our 1912 house originally had 1 closet in the entire house. Having "only" one linen closet would certainly not be a problem for me. Really though, how many sheets do you have?? We only keep 1 extra set for the master bedroom. We take one of the pillow cases and fold all the other items into it. That little bundle sits on a shelf in our bedroom closet.
stjamesb
14 years ago
@Billl, we have 1 extra set for the master bedrm as well. For other beds, we keep it simple by keeping them the same size so couple extra sets there. Having said that, I do understand the OP's meant about sheets and towels. All of my towels have to be folded in certain way and be put on shelf certain way. Yes I am OCD :) but certainly, doing that way make the shelf very neat.

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