Framing Closets for Dummies

exposed framing around door

In their zeal to pump out more content, thereby capturing more revenue from stipends, contributors to eHow.com would grab as many "titles" as possible for the same subject. One such contributor, proud possessor of a BA in English, was Miriam C – and that "C" might well have stood for "closet." We found at least five posts referencing closets with her name in the byline, and have no idea how many have been deleted in the past ten years or so. If they were all as clueless as the HomeSteady.com post "How to Frame & Close Up a Closet," a few may have fallen through the cracks in Leaf Group's niche-ification process.

Like many of the search queries scraped by eHow, this one doesn't make a lot of sense. Our staffers with some experience in home building suggest that the OQ probably wanted to know how to add a closet. Miriam, however, had a different idea;

"If you decide that you no longer need additional closet space, or you have a closet that is not working for, [sic] you have two options: you can tear out the closet or you can close it up. "

In all honesty, we've never heard of someone having too much closet space... but if that's what Miriam thinks, then we'll go with it (even if it is a rather dumb notion). So we took a look at what Ms C had in mind. Our staffers figured that the task would go something like this: 1) remove the door, frame, and casing molding; 2) add a sole plate and studs to the rough opening, plus a top plate if necessary; 3) drywall, tape, and paint; 4) extend the baseboard and shoe across the new wall. Easy-peezy.

Miriam kinda got it right, though she made it unnecessarily complicated with steps like,

"...build a frame to slide in the doorway... measure from the floor to the top of the of the door frame. Subtract 4 inches from this measurement to find the height of your studs for the frame."

Sorry, Miriam, but your studs are gonna be an inch short: apparently you don't know that 2-by-4s are only 1½" thick! While you're at it, you need to measure from the floor to the bottom of the header. And then there's,

"You will need two pieces the length of the frame you are building, and enough stud pieces that you can space them 16 inches apart and at each end of the frame."

Chances are pretty good that the jack studs and the header are at least partially exposed once the casing and jambs are removed. If not, it's easy enough to strip off half an inch or so of drywall with a knife and straightedge — that way, you don't have to add another pair of studs. You'll only need a sole plate and one or two studs that you can toenail in place. And how about,

"Nail the frame into place. First nail it into the floor, and then the ceiling on each side of each stud...."?

Looks like Miriam doesn't know that doors are only 80-84" tall, not room height...

We admit we have no idea why someone would wall up a perfectly good storage space unless they're hiding a body, but we think they'd be better off taking directions from someone who knew framing terminology like "header" or "toenail" instead of thinking that the top of a door frame is the ceiling. You know. someone like our Dumbass of the Day?

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