Bedroom Closet Rehab
First, the bedroom closet, complete with the old carpeting. Those are sliding mirrored doors on the closet.
As part of the preparation for the new resident, I wanted to remove the old carpeting and paint inside of the closet. In order to do this, the existing organizers had to come out.
After removing the organizers and pulling up the carpet, I discovered that the closet used to be two separate closets that were later joined together. Since I needed some hardwood "blanks" to repair other areas in the unit, I decided to remove the existing hardwood and lay new flooring in the closet.
A line was scribed from one side of the closet opening to the other, and a circular saw was used to cut it. Of course, you can't get a circular saw to to cut all the way up to a wall, so a Sawzall was used to finish the cut.
Since the hardwood strips are nailed in at an angle, working in one direction is simple. Just get a pry bar under each strip and wiggle it loose.
Working in the other direction is more difficult if you want to recycle the hardwood strips. You need to sacrifice a strip or two by cutting them out with a circular saw to expose the nailed edge. If you are wondering about the purpose of the sponge...it's a cushion. I had knee surgery back in July, and it still smarts to kneel on hard surfaces.
With a cut made lengthwise in the first strip, it can be pried out with a small wonderbar. Then you work backwards to remove the remaining strips.
Above is a shot of the closet, now stripped down to the subfloor. The pile of strips in the foreground will be used to repair other sections of the floor. See the Hardwood Floor Repairs page for details.
With everything out, the closet is repainted.
I will be installing laminate flooring in the closet, and I want the new closet floor to be level with the existing hardwood floors. To accomplish this, a layer of 7/16" OSB is laid down as subflooring.
The new laminate flooring is installed. I love how fast and easy this stuff goes down, and how much residents like it!
Once the flooring was laid, I used "Great Stuff" expanding foam to seal up the gap between the floor and walls. This cuts down on air infiltration, which is important because this is a ground floor unit with an unheated crawl space underneath. Once cured, the excess foam is trimmed away and the masking tape removed.
The closet organizers are re-installed and adjusted.
When I went to re-install the sliding doors, they were not tall enough to reach the guides at the top of the closet opening. This was due to the fact that the floor track was installed on top of the carpet and padding. To compensate for the difference in height now that the carpet is gone, I laid down a 1x4" section of #1 clear pine for the floor track to rest upon. This also required me to install some trim to make it look presentable.
And here's the completed closet, ready to have clothes hanging in it.