
Living in a small 1950s Cape Cod we are no strangers to tight spaces and making every inch count when designing renovations. Our youngest daughter’s bedroom is a small converted attic space with many angled low ceilings making it impossible to place a closet or even a decent sized dresser in her room. She always dreamed of a walk-in closet so we decided it was time to get creative. The long hallway right outside her room contained an empty knee wall space. It wouldn’t be a standard walk-in closet but we felt we could give her additional space and the feel she was looking for.

To be honest, we started this project in 2016 by ripping out the sheet rock, bringing the wall out a little and adding four doors. We got as far as insulating, sheet rock and shiplap but then stopped there because we got busy with some other projects. The space was left to become a dumping ground for all things until last weekend when we decided to revisit this project and finish it up.



We cleaned everything out and decided that the shiplap wasn’t going to work because it was adding another 1/2″ in depth that would be better used for deeper drawers and to hang clothes plus it would be covered by the built-in drawers we would be placing in front of it. We took out the shiplap, finished up where we needed to sheetrock and decided to place paneling on the slanted ceiling to continue what we already had on the hallway ceiling. We did a rough sketch of how we envision this space, which is a rod on one end and built-in drawers and shelves on the other. Our next step is to fill in the nail holes, start painting and then take a trip to Ikea to pick up their Komplement drawers. Rich will use them as a base and then build a frame around them and add new fronts that we can paint so the other all look will feel custom.



Here is a moodboard that I pulled together. I would like to paint the paneling Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace and the built-in drawers Benjamin Moore Boothbay Gray with some vintage brass pulls. I ordered and received the Loloi rug and love love love it! I originally liked the windowpane ottoman but found this smaller low leather one from TJmaxx which is a better fit for the space and also has storage inside of it – bonus!
Hope you follow along as we build this (half) walk-in closet!
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