Turning an Attic into a Closet/Playroom | I Like To Make Stuff

Hi, I'm Bob and I like to

make

things. Today we are going to cut a hole in this wall to

make

a

closet

in a game room. For this one, we're back here in my kids' room, now that we've done a lot of things. The work here made some bunk beds, a climbing wall, and a dresser, but technically this isn't a bedroom in the US. At least a bedroom is something that has a

closet

and two ways out, so you need a door. that can open and close and you need a window or door that you can get out of in case of an emergency, now we have a door.

We have a window but we don't have a closet yet, so today we're going to drill through the back of this wall into the

attic

space and build in a closet, but the nice thing is that there's some extra space on the side where I'm going to use it. also. There is a good amount of

attic

space behind this wall. You reach it through a door that used to be right here in this wall. Now we have removed it and covered it temporarily. This is how we're going to go in and out until we make the big hole here, then the closet will end up going here in this space and it'll stop right here, but that means we have all of that down there to do something so I think we're going to do a secret room currently we have to do a lot of insulation because this is the attic space so the ceiling is right there it's very hot in here and there's no way to control the climate so first we're going to put up some insulation and then some walls and then we'll work on the closet.

This r-13 will go between these studs on the outside, so I'm just cutting pieces to the correct length and pushing. There, the cuts are very easy with a simple knife and then once you have it, you can staple it to the studs. I'm using this type of hammer stapler where you hit it like this and you can use any type. stapler, works the same, this is fiberglass insulation which is very unpleasant for your skin so make sure you wear gloves. You should probably wear long sleeve gloves too, but it's so hot here I'd probably overheat and I have a mask. and you should probably use it too, but again it's so hot that I used a speed square to find the angle of the beams so I could make a kneeling wall going straight down now that the trick is pretty well covered in the parts. video i made on the speed square that will be linked in the description to make this short knee wall.

I cut several pieces of 2x4's that were the correct height, these were to go every 16 inches on center to form the wall and the top of them were cut at the angle I found using the speed square earlier. I also cut a long piece for the bottom plate and a long piece for the top plate, but that top plate needed to get an angle as well. I set the table saw blade to 35 degrees, which was the same angle I found before, then I cut an angle to the end of this top plate. It will be obvious in just a minute, but the reason this angle is there is so that you have a completely flat wall with no angle at the top, this will make it much easier to drywall once these walls are in place. its place along the bottom plate.

I marked every 16 inches and then centered each of these studs on that mark. I nailed them with a framing nailer, but a hammer would work fine and on the latter you can see what happens when you don't have enough air pressure. After that, I placed the top plate against the angled part of the studs and nailed them. In nails from there I knew I would have no problem getting this wall up the stairs because it was pretty small, but if you have a larger wall like that, you'll probably want to do it in the room it goes to.

I slid this thing into place and made sure it was plumb and then just hammered some nails into the floor and the joists above. Now that I'm cutting out a section in the wall, I have to reinforce the things that are sitting there. On top of that wall are currently the beams and to do that I'm going to put a header. Now I'm going to make a header with two two-by-sixes sandwiched together, but that doesn't get thick enough, so we're also going to cut a half-inch piece of plywood to place right in the middle, glue the three pieces together, and Place screws on both sides that will form a really solid beam to place and transport the load. from the joists above, okay, so I turned off the power because it's time to remove these studs and the electrical wires that run through them, so I turned off the power to the circuit so I know they're here, but I also want to double check with this, This will tell you if electricity is passing through a wire, as long as it doesn't turn red.

You're okay, basically all I'm doing here with the electrical is unscrewing everything, flipping the switch and plugging it into the studs and then putting it back where it was is not difficult at all, it just had to be moved. This video is sponsored by energizer and they gave me that Vision HD plus focus headlamp that I'm using and it was a big help. On this project with the electricity off I didn't have to worry about trying to operate a flashlight. I had my hands free and could place the light exactly where I needed it. It was very useful, in fact I kept it on even after the power was turned back on, it is very useful to have on hand.

I keep one in my store. I keep one in my vehicle. Look at them. I have a link in the description if you want to know more, so this pipe is correct. There is actually a vacuum system built into our house. We don't really use it very often, especially in this part of the house, so I'm going to cut it off and cover it up just below this line. After covering it up, I went. to the outside of the wall and removed the molding that was nailed through the drywall at the bottom plate of the wall, so it had to be removed before I could remove that bottom plate, then all the vertical studs on that wall They were sitting on top of that bottom plate, so I used a multi-tool to make a cut at each end of my new opening and then used a pry bar and hammer to lift that piece out of place.

Two cables came out of the floor and left. through that bottom plate so I had to undo them from the receptacles to get them through that hole and even after that they were still coming out of the floor in the wrong place, I had to cut a section of this pine board so I could move them down a stud, so there were two wires coming out of the floor here and they were actually coming straight down to where we're going to put that opening, so I had to re-wrap them, unfortunately that means I had to break some. of the boards that were down here covering all the joists, so I'll have to go back and patch them, but now I have to drill some holes to reroute those cables to this section and then put everything back where it was later.

I reconnected all the electrical wiring and then cleaned the rest of the opening where my new head was going to go. I also cleaned up the outside edges where the jack studs were going to sit to make sure they went right into where I needed them when the time came, then it was time to attach the header, now this is a very tight fit which is a very nice thing to do. Well, you definitely want it to fit well, it's very important, it was a little difficult to fit. and I ended up getting the big five pound sled out to get it in there after I pushed it all the way up and flushed it with the outside of the uprights, then put on my Jack uprights, these go right into place under the header to hold it up, then I put some nails in to tie them to the studs behind them, done for today, so I didn't show all this work, but I had to move some electricity and it's all out of the opening.

To move an air conditioning vent, I ended up having to move it to where you can't even see it, but it still goes into the other room, but we're going to leave the grille where it was to keep some air conditioning in. I flow air from this room into that one to even out the temperature a little bit, so I have the rest of the insulation on top. This space here will be our access door to enter the rest of the attic in case we need it. I made good progress, so the plan changed a little, but I think it will actually be for the better.

Originally, this was going to be a really separate room from the closet and I was going to put up a wall right here in the middle. with a door, but now I think it makes more sense to leave everything as one big space, of course we still have to have access to the attic there and I have it figured out, but that means we have to build another one. of these new walls to extend this completely, so we'll do that and then we'll work on the access to get into the attic, so now we need to make a little frame to go around where the attic access will be. and you could use 1 by 6 for this, but I don't really have any on hand.

However, I have a piece of the old one by 12, so I'm going to cut it into the correct sizes. I removed four of these pieces. in place making sure the bottom edge sticks out 1/2 inch from the studs so that when we add drywall to the ceiling the surface of the drywall lines up with the bottom edge of this board and also the size of this access door. It doesn't really matter at all, there's just some plywood on the top and bottom, so I worked to make it look like a big enough opening that we could get things in and out of the attic space if we needed to do it behind it.

On this Raptor there was a stud that went up to a beam on top because we have a bit of a weird roof, I basically just had to mark it and cut it a little shorter and then move it a couple of inches so it wouldn't be in the way of the door opening and closing and digging theory trying to find some screws that are not going to be too long and go through the piece of wood that we are going to use for the door and then also some that are very long so that they will go in two by six on the side.

I cut a half inch piece of plywood for the door, but if moisture affects it, I'll replace it with pressure treated wood and it should be fine. so there's really no way for us to film this to show you what I'm about to do, but basically we're going to take this hinge on this side that's going to go to the two by six that are here for the beam and then the long slide is going to go on the back of our piece of plywood that will be our door, so I'm going to screw it in there with the hinges on this side so the door opens that way and then we're going to put some of this insulation on the back of that door, it should be ready, so I like it.

Josh is amazing and can film this, so let's do another big shout out to Energizer, we couldn't have gotten this done. Taken without headlights, it's a great tool to have on hand. They are very well made, but are quite inexpensive. They have lighting options for many different situations. Be sure to check them after the door is ready. cared for and insulated, it was time to start removing the old trim from the old door. We will eventually build some fairly shallow shelves in here so there is some storage inside the bathroom, but the first step was to remove the old frame. we've got the door in, we've got all the insulation in, we've cleaned up a bit and now it's time to cut the big hole in the bedroom.

Now we want to do this in a way that it doesn't tear off the drywall around it, we don't want to break it, so you need to mark the drywall and in this case I'm going to mark it on the front and on the back, now I want to mark those lines on the other side of this. wall as well, but obviously I can't see exactly where it is, so I'll use the drywall knife or drywall sword as I call it before, and I'll stick it in the corners as a reference point and then on the other side of the wall. wall, I can use them to mark the lines which came out surprisingly well and there was very little clean up so we then had to cut out the rest of the pine floor so we could fit a full replacement board, that multi tool is super useful and On jobs like this, I measured the overall size I needed and then cut another one of those 1 by 12 boards to fit there.

The next step is to put up the drywall here and unfortunately I'm not going to give you everything. The procedure for putting up drywall is not difficult, it's just outside the scope of this video, but I'm sure you can find a good resource if that's something you need to do, like I said, it's not difficult, it's just a tedious task. . Sometime aside from the finishing work, one of the only difficult parts of drywall is making sure you properly cut the areas for your fixtures, i.e. lighting fixtures, receptacles, and plumbing, you have to take quite a few steps to accomplish this. make sure you cut the holes in the right place, we have the room primed and painted here, it's ready to go, so now we're ready to close this frame and then lay some flooring here, now theroom and this.

The floors are on different levels, they are a little more than three-quarters of an inch apart. I could put another level of subfloor here to try to level it out, but that transition is going to be a little difficult, so instead I'm just going to take advantage of it and build it up a little bit and place the frame on top. I went ahead and bought some primed MDF to use on the door jamb. Let me use the same material for the bottom sill of the opening. Now cut a 2x4 to put in place to raise the surface just above the floor on the top section, then I placed the bottom piece and made sure the front edge matched up with where the molding was.

The moldings were gone once I put them on, I went ahead and nailed the top one to match and to prepare for the floor I laid out some subfloor okay I'm ready to lay the wood floor this is the same as me. I've used it before when we renovated this room, so I'll link to that video if you want to know more about it, but it came together, it's very easy to put down. I was so proud of my daughter for helping me, she's amazing after us. I put the molding on the outside of the opening.

I added some molding to the inside and around the front door. I also put skirting around the inside of the closet just to clean it up. Good. I put all the moldings in place. So now I'm just going to use caulk to fill in all the nail holes and then it's time to paint, but I'm not going to make you watch me paint. Now it's time to hang the rod to hang all the clothes. and we came up with some really complicated ways to make brackets, we ended up with just a simple L bracket that will go to the beam and these will work fine, they are a little rough on the edges because they are made for construction so I will use a flat disk to smooth them out and then we'll spray paint them so they fade.

Alexa turns on the exhaust so the wand holds clothes. I used a very large dowel. and I cut it to the size I needed to make a slit and each one to slide into the holder. I lifted a piece of wood along both ends and scribbled a line so those lines were parallel, then cut along those lines with the jigsaw. It was a big enough opening to hammer the bracket in and at the second end it really wasn't big enough. You can see a very small split there, but the good thing is that I was planning on drilling a hole through the wood through the metal. and then I drove a screw in to hold it all together, put in a new light and then figured out exactly where I wanted the bar to go so there would be enough room to put the hangers on and off, but one of the problems was that the farthest beam was actually inside the wall, not along that edge.

I had to go up to the attic and screw in another piece of wood so there was something to drive the screw into and, man, was it hot in there? I was only there for a couple. of minutes shows me that the insulation was really helping after screwing the bar to the joists. I put the logs back in that exposed hole in the wall and then it was time to hang the clothes, so it's almost done, the only thing. What I don't have here is a set of doors. Now there are many different ways you can cover this depending on your particular space.

You can make folding doors, barn doors, sliding doors inside. You can hang a curtain. If you want I'll add some doors but that will be a separate video so it's working as is for now let's look at the interior so this was a lot of work but I'm very glad to have the project finished. Now we have a lot more storage space here to hang clothes and toys, and a little space for the kids, so it's great. It was pretty scary putting a huge hole in the wall, but as long as you do your research you'll be fine, just be sure to check your local building codes to make sure you have the correct header for the span and the load that will be on top if you have a project like this.

What are you worried about getting started, let's talk about it in the comments, we can share some ideas and maybe you can muster some courage to make that first big cut thanks to energizer for sponsoring this video if you want to see one of those headlights be sure to hit the link in the description. I have many other videos you might want to watch, click on them and don't forget to subscribe. That's it guys, thanks for watching. See you next time. a bedroom has to have a door that can open and close and then a second wait, damn, maybe we can share some ideas and you can be confident, too confident, confident, counting that, mmm.