Bedroom #3 had an awkward closet location. Apparently the original designers did not take bed placement into consideration. The narrow dimension, from closet door to the opposite wall, was a mere 8'-9", which would leave only about 22 inches at the foot of a queen-size bed. A floor air register by the window was the other limiting factor.
So the best solution was to remove the closet entirely, squaring off the room, and annexing one of the adjacent room's closets. It helps that the adjacent room will get enlarged in the future to include plenty of new storage space.
Luckily, the rafters, ceiling joists and floor joists are all parallel to the demo walls, making this project one without structural impact — another reason to take out the walls.
Pieces of the removed gypsum wallboard were used for patching. It's the easiest way to keep the wall texture consistent.
Electrical improvements include dimmable downlights, more power outlets, new phone outlet and in-wall speaker wiring, which, by the way, should be kept at least six inches away from the power lines to avoid audio interference.
Lots of little black bugs the size of fleas are infesting the tender growing tips of this Tenuifolium. They don't move. They seem to just hunker down to suck the juices of the new growth. Ants walk all over them like they're ground tiles. Scraping squishes them easily. Pesticide spraying gets them off for a day or two, but they quickly return. Tree seems okay, so I'll just leave it. Tree has grown a few inches since first planted.
Although it wasn't a load-bearing wall, corner studs are still necessary for wallboard nailing at the edges of this closet wall. But the framers never had future removal in mind. They lapped them into the perpendicular studs with lots of face nails. I had to do some fancy cutting with a reciprocating saw and use a portable planer. This also left narrower than usual bays between studs for electrical boxes on either side of the wall.
I've been making furniture. This one is rather interesting. I have a pedestal file that's about 5 1/2 inches lower than the desk. There's also an odd pointed corner at the desk. So I had a "design opportunity." Top piece is 1-inch acrylic slab. Rods are each 1 3/8 in diameter. Bottom is nominal 5/4 solid cherry. Acrylic to acrylic welds are the only permanent connections. The rods slide into holes in the cherry, which sits on the pedestal file sandwiching a non-slip pad. The entire assembly weighs 39 pounds.
