“I’m turning our guest bedroom into a closet for my wife. I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, but she has too many clothes.” With that, the homeowner behind @sasserhouse starts Day 1 of a closet build. On screen the opening is an armful of clothes carried out of a bedroom with a carved wooden bed, a chandelier style light and a window with a bamboo shade.
His caption sets the schedule: he will transform the guest bedroom into his wife’s dream closet space over the next week or so, and “it’s gonna take more than 5 days.” Inside the video he is more optimistic. The last thing he says is “Come back tomorrow for day number two. I only have five days to get this done.”
Day 1 is a clear out. “First thing we gotta do is get everything out of this room,” he says. He jokes that his wife might own more yarn than clothes, and says he is taking most of it to the shed. The boots are handled differently: they go to the room next door “cause they’ll come back in here when the room is done.” The frames show a wall of boots and heels on wooden shelves above a bench, and he lifts them down by the armful.
He also answers the question he expects from viewers. “Are y’all really gonna give up a guest bedroom to make it a closet? And the answer is yes. We have been blessed with a three bedroom, two bath house, and we only need one guest bedroom. But this house has tiny closets. And when you got a wife like mine, you need some closet space.” He adds that they will reuse the bookshelves, but they “have got to go. For now.”
Then comes the physical part. He carries out a green chest of drawers, a framed sign and a board with writing on it, and clears the shelves and the bed. “Okay, that was actually a lot harder than I thought,” he says of getting the bed out. Then he lets viewers in on the flaw in the plan: his wife is out on tour, and “the only part I didn’t think through is how I’m gonna move this giant thing by myself.”
The giant thing is a large wooden piece of furniture, and the video shows him angling it toward the door and then stepping back. “Gosh, that’s heavy,” he says, and then, “There’s no way I’m getting this out to the shed by myself.” He ends the day with a line his wife would say, “Look at all the endless possibilities.” By the last frame the room is an empty box with new looking floors, a light fixture and a window, and a bare wall where the shelves were.
Anyone converting a spare room into a closet can take a few practical points from the order he works in.
Sort what is leaving into two piles before you start. His clothes and yarn go to the shed; the boots go to the next room because they return when the closet is done. Deciding that on Day 1 keeps the boots from being buried in a shed you have to dig out again.
Empty the room completely before you measure or build. He removes the shelves, bed, drawers and wall decor, so Day 2 can begin with a clean room instead of a half cleared one.
Plan the heavy pieces first, and find a second person. The one item he could not move alone was the largest, and he only noticed it at the end. Line up help before you start for beds, big desks and anything else that will not fit through a door easily.
Be realistic about time. He says five days in the video and more than five in the caption. If you have a deadline, the clear out can eat a day by itself.
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