Hello everyone - I am an interior designer. I dislike long narrow “walk in” closets. Even if you have a designer create a beautiful, one sided narrow walk in - 2-3 feet of pathway is not enough. This will create a space that is not useable by people of all abilities, and wastes an entire wall. I believe a true walk in needs to have a 4-5 foot pathway. If you don’t have that much space, create a beautiful reach in closet. The options for reach in closets are endless. Keep in mind that a beautiful, well planned reach in closet will be an bigger selling point than a narrow walk in. I am very opinionated about good design, and my passion is promoting, creating and educating my clients about Universal Design.

Thank you very much for thinking of us and posting pictures of your mom's beautiful dining room, mojomom. I certainly hope that the choices we make for our home will age as gracefully as your mom's. : ) Thanks for the pictures mdln. Those are very nice. Awww, no worries sheesh. This technological stuff is so hard to keep up with, isn't it. Our video screen for watching movies is hooked up to a speaker cabinet from 1978 (the record player is even still in it) because neither dh nor I are up to figuring out the new sound systems right now, LOL. We'll leave out the electric fireplace, jlc712. In fact, we've had an about face with the whole project...Now why I didn't do this earlier, I don't know. I drew everything out on graph paper (always better than doing math in your head-oy!), and with the other furniture in the dining room, I was stunned (smacking forehead, here) that there really is only room for an 8' table. Ummmm...we're outgrowing our 8' table already, and 1/2 of our kids are under 10. That lead to a whole house evaluation, and a complete rearrangement of furniture and room functions. As a result, we flip-flopped our living room and dining room today. (Fortunately, the kitchen is smack dab in the middle of the house with the other rooms on either side of it.) The living room (I mean...new dining room) is 15.5' x 25'. It can handle a dining room table, a big dining room table. Like 16' long big. And that's with putting a closet at one end of the room (so all these closet ideas? They won't be wasted!) For DH, this means doing the longer, more extensive project of supporting the ceiling with beams rather than a closet, but it will make for a wide open and airy living room(yay, I love airy!), and a long dining room with plenty of room for a larger table. Phew. Since we often have large groups of people over, this should work very well for us. We were even able to work it so that we got more couch and chair seating in the 14'7" x 17' room than we could logistically work in the 15.5' x 25' room. It all seems good. It is so true that it pays to live in a house for awhile to see how the space functions before making major changes. Thank you one and all for helping us think this project through. You have been incredibly kind and helpful and I love the creative insights and ideas that you brought forth.

I totally agree with cpartist. You are really limiting yourself by staying in the footprint you made for yourself. Considering the investment you will make in the addition, I would want to do everything I could to make this room and possibly the laundry room/office work. I would also think about landscaping. Maybe your bedroom doesnt look to the patio because you move it to the back of the house, but you have succulents and cacti planted in front of the bedroom windows for a beautiful view. I'd start over with a fresh piece of paper and think about every option. I say this because I am doing a master suite addition to my house. I put a lot of thought into what I wanted. The people on this board also really helped me and I hired an architect. We came up with a great plan and will be starting this week on the project.

Ok... I just checked and measured etc... I can triple hang on the back wall there is enough room... no long dress but shirts, sweaters etc... Starting from 1 inch from the ceiling and using a pull-down bar as per latifolia's suggestion... and next one down moves back about 5 inches and adjust the height... I can then put shelves or I am thinking the third rod right below it. Now then the front rod can be removed or adjusted and can see what I can do next... I can get rid of that large canvas holdall and use baskets on my side of the wall... I can go as wide as 10 inches..... and either put a half rod in front I really don't want to double hang in the front.