[flippedcracker]

Hi. I'm new around here and looking for some help. I'm turning a guest room into a nursery for our first born due in a couple months. I'm kinda stuck on what to do with the closet. i don't have great pictures to help explain my situation, but i will get some tonight.

basically, i have a closet with 2 sliding doors that are behind the entry door. the opening goes from the wall that has the door, to another wall (which is the back of a closet in the adjacent room). The doors also go from the floor to the ceiling. i'm putting a chair rail all around the room, and am hoping to get some ideas of what to do with it, the base boards, and the crown when i get to the closet opening. the doors are inset in the open about 3-4 inches.

this is the only picture i currently have:


I did a return on chair rail, but once i started doing the base, i didn't know what to do. previously, there was a small section cut out of the base for the doors to fit in. is putting base in the closet the normal thing to do? i'll get better pictures tonight, and maybe you guys can give me some tips.

 

[Millertyme]

definitely need some pics of the actual closet. Im not too clear on what you are trying to ask.

 

[DannyT]

i think he is saying that there is just drywall around the closet doors, no cased opening. I would put a jamb in the closet door opening and casing around it. Then everything would but to the trim around the opening and the doors would close against the jambs. the ones in the house we bought last year are like yours and i put jambs in them. in my house they notched the bottom of the doors for the baseboard. lowes sells 1by mdf cheap, thats what i used on all the windows for jambs, they were all drywall with no trim. looks so bare with nothing but a marble sill.

 

[flippedcracker]

ok, here are some better pictures:







what i'm looking for is ideas on how to handle the chair rail, baseboards, and crown. i kinda figured i would do baseboards in the closet since it would seem to flow better that way. but if i keep the doors, i'll have to do a slot in the base for them to fit, otherwise i'll have a gap when they're closed.

i did a return on the chair rail, and figured i'd do the same with the crown. as you can see, my ceiling isn't even close to being level or straight (there's a major dip on the right side of the closet, and then goes up higher than anywhere else).

i also thought about adding a jamb like Danny said, and dropping down a section from the ceiling which will help with the waviness, and then i could put crown all around.

any ideas on what would be best, or most standard?

 

[GottaFixIt]

I'd say the next step would be deciding what you want to do about doors and go from there. Do you want to stay with sliders or are you thinking about switch to bi-folds or another door type?

Most closets I've ever seen have had baseboard to cover the bottom of the drywall. It kind of looks like they used a J-Channel Edging. I'd say it would be a personal preference, but for a closet, it looks ok to me.

I've never seen crown in a closet. The closet isn't exactly a focal point. Most of the time it will likely be closed and your work will go unappreciated 99.9% of the time.

Personally, if you're ok with the doors, I would leave the closet as-is. It looks like you could shim out the trim piece over the top door track and continue the crown all the way around. I would return the chair rail(like you did) and just leave a butt on the base - flush to the opening.

That wave is pretty bad. Crown is definitely going to draw attention to it. I'd say to build it up with compound, but it looks like there's a texture on the ceiling already. That can be a pain...

 

[flippedcracker]

i can't really switch to bi-fold since the closet is right behind the door, and if the closet door was ever left open, the entry door wouldn't open.

i wasn't planning on doing crown in the closet. my plan at this point is to do a return on it at the opening of the closet. i thought about trying to put the crown over the top track, but it looks funny when i hold it up to see what it's like. plus the waviness in the ceiling really messes with the crown on the right side. i think it's nearly a half inch difference from one side of the closet to the other.

 

[DannyT]

i would frame the opening down to regular door height and install some sliders with jambs. then you could run your crown all the way around the room, have casing to butt the baseboard to and not have to deal with notching the baseboard in the door opening. i wouldnt waste time putting crown in the closet. most closets i see you cant see the ceiling anyway.

 

[Ron6519]

For the base molding, leave a gap on each side of the doors so the doors go to the wall.
For the crown, build out the top so it's on the same plane as the wall and install the crown continuously around the room.
The closet is an oddly built structure, you'll need to work around this or restructure the unit, which isn't really needed.