Help me stop stupid banging my stupid knee on my stupid closet door

November 13, 2021 5:57 AM

I have closet doors in my office that look basically like this. They're heavy, they grind noisily against the rail when you move them, and I hate them for attacking me.

I just banged my knee on the door for the second time in a minute and a half.

TL/DR: Could I remove the door and hang curtains instead or would that make my office look like a dorm room? Is there another lazy option I am not thinking of? Could anyone show me an image where that does not look janky?


A few details:
The closet is a requirement because my office serves a lot of purposes overall. It's partially hidden by a red velvet couch I climb over to access everything on the left side of the closet, and I refuse to give it up because I like the red velvet and the pets sleep on it. And sometimes I do too, if I have insomnia.

I'm good at organization and taxonomy. I can alleviate some of the pressure that closet bears through practical editing I'm going to do today.

My other option is to gut the thing and redo the shelving for more storage square footage and easier access to more things on the right, easily-accessed side, but I swear I do things like that every other month and would like something to be easy for once.

posted by A Terrible Llama to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

I took the door off my bedroom closet a few months ago and am so happy I did. In my case it was a normal door that just opened in such a way as to really restrict the layout of my room. I wish I’d done it years ago! A daily annoyance, eliminated!
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:03 AM on November 13, 2021

If you hang curtains using a nice curtain rod mounted above/outside the frame trim, I think it will look just like curtains covering a large window. I'd probably try to match the rod & curtain fabric to any existing curtains in the room. Putting the rod inside the doorframe makes it more obvious that you've just removed the doors.
posted by belladonna at 7:18 AM on November 13, 2021

Curtains are the answer! I had doors similar to this in my bedroom, only worse because they elbowed out into the room. Took them out three years ago, do not miss them in the slightest.

Don't do tension rods. The hardware store will have rod holders that you can screw into the ceiling -- well, the top of the doorframe.
posted by humbug at 7:40 AM on November 13, 2021

I'm a big fan of subbing curtains for closet doors. Find a curtain made of a nice colored satin that works with the room's decor. I used dark bright crimson in my bedroom and love the effect. The rod barely matters: if it's high enough up you won't see it anyway. Make sure the curtain is the right length.
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:09 AM on November 13, 2021

I'm also Team Curtain, and like everyone else says mount the rod over the closet like it was a Window. Target has a reliably nice-looking stock of wide curtain rods and some decent curtains, but you can also find a huge variety online that might complement your red velvet couch (if you use Amazon, they have a staggering array of cool curtains; the ones I have over my office doorway have shiny stars on them).

Tip: hang the curtain rod at least a couple inches wider than the closet, don't put the mounting hardware directly above the doorframe if you can help it. Otherwise you end up with a little gap at the edges of your curtains that either look weird or let in a lot more dust than they would if they really overlapped.

You could also, if there's room and you want a bit more dramatic look, mount the curtain rod inside the closet so the curtains hang inside the door frame. It looks a little bit like a stage when you do that, though, which can either be a great look or make the room feel like the school assembly hall/lunchroom.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:39 AM on November 13, 2021

Curtain sounds like an easy fix. If you end wanting a door again, consider a barn door. You could do it with 2 sliding panels or a single big one, though you'd enough room to one side of the closet or the other to slide the whole panel over. We did this for a MBR/MB doorway to replace some idiotically situated French doors and never looked back. Now I want them everywhere.
posted by jquinby at 8:43 AM on November 13, 2021

If they're what I'm thinking of, those should be easy to take off and get a sense of how it looks with fabric (use binder clips/similar to attach to the door track for a visual). Just lift the front door straight up to get past any floor stopper, then slowly pull the bottom outward until you can lift up and get the wheels off the overhead track. While it's off you could probably also clean/lubricate it to at least stop the grinding if you want to put them back up while you contemplate your options.
posted by teremala at 10:07 AM on November 13, 2021

We took off almost all closet doors, and I love it. It makes everything more accessible. I vote do it, live with no doors for a week to see if it bugs you, than buy curtains if it does.
posted by Valancy Rachel at 10:36 AM on November 13, 2021

Thanks so much everyone! You have given me confidence that this is a thing that can be done in a way that's going to look deliberate and thought-out as opposed to something like thumbtacking sheets to a window (I'm too old to get away with that.)
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:24 PM on November 14, 2021

followup - my closet curtain rods are inside the closet. You can't really see them because of how high up in the closet they're placed -- like behind the upper frame. I love it.
posted by fingersandtoes at 6:52 PM on November 14, 2021