This is a serious question, even if it sounds facetious. I've looked at a lot of trackplans, and many of the "around the walls of a spare bedroom" leave room for a door, but there aren't any closets indicated. Those of you that have done this, do you have rooms without a closet? Even if I could wrangle the extra bedroom, I'd never get away with the loss of a closet. Tom
You may notice they also omit the window too. Most places (all?) in the US require a window for it to legally be a bedroom in the first place.
There's a logical reason for this. Bedroom doors tend to be in a corner of the room to maximize wall space and to facilitate furniture placement. Because of this, you can more reliably estimate where the hypothetical room a layout plan is fitting into. But, closet and window placement is not as universal in location or number. Few bedrooms have more than 1 doorway, but many have more than one window.
Easier just to omit those and basically bridge the closet opening instead of using it.
To take full advantage of space you need to get creative sometimes. A good way is to see what others have done to overcome a rooms shortcomings.
Here the benchwork accomodates the door to the closet.
Here I cross the fireplace using angle iron and cement board, the rockwork is tile thinset and tile grout I slap on there as I do renovations, it still needs to be painted. Even the roadbed is cement. Talk about quiet running.
Here on the right, I had to leave space to access the guest bedroom and my office. The wife said it was too narrow for her guest, I said it is the width of the doors, so if they can't walk down there they can't get through the doors. No response.
To access a closet you can build a lift out, lift up or swing out, just try and think out side the box.
I had to deal with a large opening into the room, three doors, a large window and a fireplace in a 15' x 24' room but I wasn't complaining as I was thrilled to have the space. I could not come up with a track plan I liked for the room and so decided to fill the room (on paper) with benchwork and tweek the track plan from there.
May I suggest you try coming up with your own track plan, instead of store bought. You may surprise yourself.
Good luck.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Late4DinnerI've looked at a lot of trackplans, and many of the "around the walls of a spare bedroom" leave room for a door, but there aren't any closets indicated. Those of you that have done this, do you have rooms without a closet?
There have been hundreds of spare-room-sized trackplans published allowing access to closets and windows.
If you post a sketch with your room dimensions, entrance(s), and obstructions, folks may have suggestions.
Byron
P.S. There are a significant percentage of spaces in basements and other areas that don't have windows or closets. I didn't appreciate how many until I started doing track plans for others’ real-life rooms. But in other cases, folks doing speculative track plans for publication just don’t bother allowing for real-world obstructions.
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
Real estate people where I am will not call a room a bedroom if it doesn't have a closet.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Very creative Batman. To be clear, I don't have a spare bedroom. I like to look at track plans and I thought it odd so many didn't allow for closets. I can see how you could work with windows, but the closet thing puzzled me.
I'll keep my questions about garage layouts, heat, cold and humidity to myself, since I'm not going that route.
I informed my missus that when my R/R was built, she would not have access to the Closet, or Built-in-Wardrobe, as we call them in the UK.
I took the door off and stored it, fitted a couple of storage shelves inside above my Baseboard level and provided a really usefull plastic storage box for low level. Then I cantilevered an off-shoot of my B/Boards diagonally into the Closet to provide switching for 2 No. Pet-Coke Spurs. Job done. Paul
"It's the South Shore Line, Jim - but not as we know it".
LazersI took the door off and stored it
I took off the oak mantle and it is stored in the guest bedroom closet. Another roll of the eyes from the wife.
Before.
After. The pricey artwork is now in my living room, it was my Mothers.
Someday I'll tell you how the Grand Piano magically moved itself from the (what is now) the trainroom to the livingroom one weekend while the wife was away at a dogshow.
In the "Spare Bedroom" where I built STRATTON AND GILLETTE number 5, the closet occupied an entire 10 foot long wall. There were 7 feet of sliding closet doors, so just 18 inches of wall on either side jutted into the room. With the closet doors removed, this became easily usable space.
When the layout was built, I simply built up some terrain to absorb/disguise some of the remaining wall and lived with it.
I am sure if a trackplan would have ever been published, these two walls would have been omitted from the plan for artistic reasons.
The layout is gone, and the room is demoed right now, but you can see the remains of the closet wall framing in the picture below.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Hi all
Closet, translation valuable modeling space do any of you remember the artical probably more than one, where the closet was the train room all be it an "N" scale one.
Or the closet became the modelling workshop not just somehere to dump the junk you did not know what to do with it.
Spairoom RR pronounced spare-oom any one??
regards John
I built a swing-down section and a swing-up section. I would have rather had two swing-up sections, but there is ductwork for the heating/AC. The swing-down section uses dowels for alignment and a slide-bolt to hold it in place. The swing-up section just sets down in place with dowels for alignment. The benchwork for both was completed and in place when I made the cuts in the benchwork. The track was then laid, secured, and ballasted. Once the ballast was dried and solid, I cut through the track.
I wired the track to the moving sections, then the approaches were fed from there. That way, when the movable sections are up/down, the approaches are electrically dead.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
While not a closet, my garage layout track plan needed to incorporate a means to maintain a large access opening for the use of the overhead garage door. Thus, I built a long swing out section that provides ample access to the garage interior from the outside. This large swing out section is 6 feet long and holds two staging yards on two levels plus three storage shelves for additional rolling stock storage. It swings on a large piano hinge and locks in place using slide latches. I also placed small casters on the swinging end of the unit to take some of the strain off the piano hinge when this section is in its normal "closed" position. This end floats a couple inches off the ground when opened. Check out how David Popp mounted the rails on PC ties before cutting the rails to create the gap between two movable sections of the Canadian Canyons layout. I used the same technique to create the gaps between my swing out section and the rest of the layout. Just make sure to cut a gap in the copper cladding on BOTH sides of the ties if you use nails to anchor the PC ties. Failing to do so will create a direct short across the rails. I powered the swing out section using a small loop in the DCC bus at the hinge point that allows the swing out section to move without affecting the DCC bus.
Hornblower
Come on Brent, tell us the Grand Piano story!
Simon
I live in a small apartment where space is somewhat limited. that is why I chose to model N scale. I have found a nice little use for the closet in my spare bedroom (or the train room as my wife calls it). This way it does not interfere with my layout space or occupy any valuable real estate. Let me know what you think....
Closet closed:
20200603_225317 by John Collins, on Flickr
Closet Open:
20200603_225302 by John Collins, on Flickr
20200603_225408 by John Collins, on Flickr
I found this to be useful.... but Ihad to sacrifice my half of the master bedroom closet to the wife in exchange..... well worth it.
That's a fanstic use of space. You could get forgotten in that desk. What a conducive workplace!
In VA, a "bedroom" doesn't require a closet. A window is a totally different issue. Heck, even a skylight can get considered an exit.
https://www.nvar.com/realtors/news/re-view-magazine/article/may-jun-2015/2015-05-06-ask-nvar-legal-definition-of-bedroom
irishRRThis way it does not interfere with my layout space or occupy any valuable real estate. Let me know what you think....
I think that is a great workspace. It looks very well put together to be fully functional in the available space.
kasskabooseIn VA, a "bedroom" doesn't require a closet.
When we lived outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1981, our house had no closets at all. If I remember right (I was only 13 and miserable to be in Louisiana), the house was built in the mid 1930s. The realtor told us that when the house was built property was taxed on the number of rooms a house had, and closets were considered rooms. For that reason, many older homes in Louisiana did not have any closets.
All my clothing was in a dresser/wardrobe, and there was no room for storage.
We moved to Cape Coral in 1982... back into Florida!
To my knowledge, typical, pre-1940's houses in Eastern Canada did not include closets. The dresser was the norm, as mentioned above. And many only had a "crawlspace" basement. The arrival of 2X4 framing and drywall pretty much led to the closet revolution... And the basement allowed more storage and... the man-cave!
My first house, built circa 1910 did not have closets as built. And as built the house was on posts, not concrete. Modified before I moved in.
In the time period it was built I believe that the average workman had much few clothes than we no now.
Our first house was built circa 1895. No closets when built. We also looked at another house of the same vintage. No closets there either. However, even in old homes, I think this is the exception. I would guess most that didn't have them originally have had them added over the years.
Mike
davidmurrayIn the time period it was built I believe that the average workman had much few clothes than we no now.
I'll bet their wives did not have as many shoes or purses either!
Having a substantial amount of clothing is a very recent thing, even for the wealthy. An example:
Without going into the whole big thing about how they know, there's substantial evidence that George Washington owned about six pairs of shoes/boots at a time. For the day, that's an incredible amount of footwear. He was literally the richest American of his day and had an inflation adjusted net worth of close to $600m. He could have as much shoe as he wanted. He had six.
I've got 11 pairs of shoes. Take that, George Washington.
I have two pair of dress shoes and a lot of specialty footware, do ice skates count, what about ski boots, rock climbing boots?
SeeYou190When we lived outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1981, our house had no closets at all. If I remember right (I was only 13 and miserable to be in Louisiana), the house was built in the mid 1930s. The realtor told us that when the house was built property was taxed on the number of rooms a house had, and closets were considered rooms. For that reason, many older homes in Louisiana did not have any closets.
In New Orleans, many older houses didn't have closets. Our aunt had what were called "chifforobes". Basically they were pieces of furniture to hold clothes. I think they also referred to bathrooms in some parts of the country.
York1 John
My train room has a closet with a traditional door on hinges. I removed the door, and built the benchwork across the doorway. A pull-down window shade at the top of the doorway makes it look like another window, and I can still access the closet via a "crawl-under".
Jim
Simon, I find that interesting about pre-40s houses in Eastern Canada. I grew up in Winnipeg in a house built in 1928 and it had closets in all bedrooms. Mind you they weren't that big, not like today.
CN Charlie
Ok, so I will continue to be off topic ... This source suggests that closets in older Canadian homes were often small rooms, not closets as we know them today:
https://homebuying.realtor/content/why-old-houses-lack-closet-space-and-how-make-modern-adjustments