DIY Built-In Modern Wardrobe Part 2 - Design
After demolition, our next step was to establish the wardrobe design so we could actually purchase the cabinets and get our materials on site. Ikea offers their PAX wardrobe cabinets in widths of 19", 29", 39" which are combined to make the larger wardrobes which offer different sliding door widths of 59", 78", 98", and 118". After about 10 design iterations and two trips to Ikea to measure, finesse, & verify to the 1/8", here's the final layout . Two 39" units sandwiching three 19" units. All 93-1/8" tall, only problem is that we only have 92" ceilings, queue my Ikea hacking tendencies.
For the sliding doors we went with the Anstad style doors to keep it clean and minimal, the layout is to the left with arrows showing how the doors will slide. To acheive this door configuration, I'm going customize a two sets of doors by splitting a pair of 59" and 78" sliding doors mating a narrow and wide leaf, gotta keep the symmetry. The simple glossy white doors will fit our interior rhyme scheme nicely and be a major upgrade from the 'Gened Up' mirrored doors with bronze trim.
I borrowed my dad's truck for a day and made a mission to dispose of our demolition materials, pick-up the Ikea wardrobes (frames and doors), and hit up the big box lumber store to get wood, drywall and insulation. We ended up with this heap of almost 800 lbs of materials filling our solarium, errr storage shed to the brim. 
After demolition we had to address a couple of problems. Here you can see a heating pipe and telephone line that circumvents the perimeter of one side of the closet. To solve this issue we will have to fur out the far short wall as a must to deal with the heating and the potential bad termination of the heater cover against the wardrobe doors. We had to do the same thing for the shower wall in our bathroom remodel.
Moving down the wall here's a shot of the nice deterioration of the original plaster wall at the base of the wall. Overall, the plaster on this wall is a mess and really, I'm not into trying to make it pretty so we're going to fur this wall out as well. This will allow us to do three things; give the floor above some secondary support; give a space for the heating pipes to run without having to modify them; and we can seal off our utility room with insulation and new drywall. Another problem is we have missing flooring where the wall was removed which the new wardrobe will not cover up.
Up at the ceiling, there's another heating pipe going to the first floor. We can also see the gash left in the plaster from the wall removal. The new wardrobe cabinets won't come out far enough to cover this up see I'm going to have some plaster /drywall repair on the agenda.
Fast forward a couple days and a few solutions later to a bit of progressive work. The rough framing is now in place, I made sure to layout the cabinet bracket mounting locations and provided plenty of blocking along the top of the wall. To solve the flooring issue and the ceiling height issue, I decided just to take all the flooring up which gives me another full 1" of height. Since our flooring sits on 2x sleepers on the concrete slab I opted to pour concrete / floor leveler to fill in between and give us a level surface. Now, onto some insulation and drywall.
After demolition, our next step was to establish the wardrobe design so we could actually purchase the cabinets and get our materials on site. Ikea offers their PAX wardrobe cabinets in widths of 19", 29", 39" which are combined to make the larger wardrobes which offer different sliding door widths of 59", 78", 98", and 118". After about 10 design iterations and two trips to Ikea to measure, finesse, & verify to the 1/8", here's the final layout . Two 39" units sandwiching three 19" units. All 93-1/8" tall, only problem is that we only have 92" ceilings, queue my Ikea hacking tendencies.
For the sliding doors we went with the Anstad style doors to keep it clean and minimal, the layout is to the left with arrows showing how the doors will slide. To acheive this door configuration, I'm going customize a two sets of doors by splitting a pair of 59" and 78" sliding doors mating a narrow and wide leaf, gotta keep the symmetry. The simple glossy white doors will fit our interior rhyme scheme nicely and be a major upgrade from the 'Gened Up' mirrored doors with bronze trim.
I borrowed my dad's truck for a day and made a mission to dispose of our demolition materials, pick-up the Ikea wardrobes (frames and doors), and hit up the big box lumber store to get wood, drywall and insulation. We ended up with this heap of almost 800 lbs of materials filling our solarium, errr storage shed to the brim. 
After demolition we had to address a couple of problems. Here you can see a heating pipe and telephone line that circumvents the perimeter of one side of the closet. To solve this issue we will have to fur out the far short wall as a must to deal with the heating and the potential bad termination of the heater cover against the wardrobe doors. We had to do the same thing for the shower wall in our bathroom remodel.
Moving down the wall here's a shot of the nice deterioration of the original plaster wall at the base of the wall. Overall, the plaster on this wall is a mess and really, I'm not into trying to make it pretty so we're going to fur this wall out as well. This will allow us to do three things; give the floor above some secondary support; give a space for the heating pipes to run without having to modify them; and we can seal off our utility room with insulation and new drywall. Another problem is we have missing flooring where the wall was removed which the new wardrobe will not cover up.
Up at the ceiling, there's another heating pipe going to the first floor. We can also see the gash left in the plaster from the wall removal. The new wardrobe cabinets won't come out far enough to cover this up see I'm going to have some plaster /drywall repair on the agenda.
Fast forward a couple days and a few solutions later to a bit of progressive work. The rough framing is now in place, I made sure to layout the cabinet bracket mounting locations and provided plenty of blocking along the top of the wall. To solve the flooring issue and the ceiling height issue, I decided just to take all the flooring up which gives me another full 1" of height. Since our flooring sits on 2x sleepers on the concrete slab I opted to pour concrete / floor leveler to fill in between and give us a level surface. Now, onto some insulation and drywall. 
Looking good...interested in seeing how the IKEA system works out for you. We have plans, to redo the interior of our master bedroom closet. Luckily, it won't require the demo that you have run into.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, we are planning on heading to Cincy for the 2011 Modern show again this year. It was great meeting you last year and look forward to catching up.
That's awesome you guys are making the road trip again. We have an after party planned for after the show Saturday night at the American Sign Museum too. We should try and gather some modernists for lunch or breakfast on Saturday.
ReplyDeleteAmazing, we're thinking of Pax built-in's too so will follow. :)
ReplyDelete