Yeah, sounds crazy, but let me explain. The master bathroom was always lacking in pretty much everything. It was cramped and poorly laid out. The cabinets next to the toilet couldn't be opened all the way and there was a floating expanse of countertop where I guess a hamper was supposed to go. We got cheap plastic stackable drawers to put under there to make up for the storage that we couldn't get into because of the toilet. The white tile was very outdated, and the countertops had burn marks from a curling iron on them. Unfortunately, the bathroom was so horrible that we didn't take any before pictures! It was almost too small to do so, anyway. I used Lowe's Virtual Room Designer to create this 3D rendering of the bathroom, icky yellow paint and all!
Here is the layout of the master suite before the renovation:
Luckily, behind the bedroom wall there is attic space above the garage. We poked a piece of wire through the drywall to see where the door would go, and we had just enough room to build the closet, allowing us to remove the current closet and double the size of the bathroom.
This is the layout after the renovation:
In order to build the closet, we first framed it out. Then we removed all the old, deflated insulation and hired people to spray in insulation around the whole room since there is no heating or cooling in the garage below. We also encased the room in rigid foam to make sure it is extra insulated. Drywalling was very difficult in the closet since the ceilings are vaulted. We were trying to maximize usable space so we encased two beams in drywall instead of dropping the ceiling. We reused most of the flooring from the original master closet, but we still ended up having to buy two cases of flooring.
In order to figure out how much shelving to use, we considered how we wanted to use the closet. Chris wanted a place to hang his pants without folding them, and I wanted shelves since I fold my pants, skirts, and shorts. We also needed a place to put our laundry basket. We used the Martha Stewart Living closet organization system in an espresso finish from Home Depot. The paint color is Behr Dolphin Fin. It's a nice true gray.
And here is a video of the full closet!
