Perhaps my most controversial purge decision yet… I demoed the only closet in our
kiddo’s soon-to-be bedroom. 
In my defense, (American) closets are just an opportunity for
hoarding junk 
, and this
particular closet totally crushed the flow of the room. 
Page (and also the room! 
) under construction
Jump ahead to read about the argument for axing the closet, construction process, before and after pictures, and all the artsy details!
Why axe the closet?
In the original layout, the main door opened into a wall. 
The swing-open closet doors crushed the square footage, and replacing them with
sliding doors made accessing the closet frustrating. I also cannot stand having
your back to the main door when at the desk. We can do better. 
In the new layout, the bed is tucked against the east wall
into a darker corner of the room. 
The
view from all other seats is also much better! There is still the potential for underbed
storage, and I found a great dresser for clothes. 
While planning this room, I discovered Cliff Tan’s “Feng Shui Modern”, which validated what “felt right” and provided a fantastic framework for spatial arrangement!
The Process
Step 1: Soundproofing. The walls were empty/thin enough to hear someone rolling over in bed between the bedrooms. 
We added Rockwool soundproofing insulation
on the leftmost wall (bordering the kitchen), followed by 1 lb mass loaded vinyl
and finished up with new plaster.
The other interior (drywall) walls got
cellulose blown-in insulation. 
Step 2: Floor patching. Matching the hardwood to patch the floor was the most annoying. Luckily, contractors who demoed the upstairs closet to make space for our wardrobe pulled up some of the hardwood that we were able to patch in here.
Step 3: (Re)painting. Turns out, plaster needs to cure
before it can be painted, and special primer needs to be used. Even high quality painter’s tape will still
rip off paint if the first paint coat doesn’t cure long enough! …Ask me how I know… 
Before & Afters
I wanted the room to vibe with our newly redecorated living room. 
Mission accomplished!
And here’s the side with the (former) closet. We moved our clothes into a
custom wardrobe
upstairs in the
new master bedroom. Our kid’s clothes are in his new dresser! 
Turns out, priming and painting fresh plaster and using the right painters’ tape
is non-trivial… Updates to come!
The Details
And now for the little projects that make this space feel like home! 
Bulletin Board
Of course a kid’s room needs a bulletin board!! The basic wood frame
was too grown-up for a 6-year-old (in my and his opinion), so I painted it with
red acrylic paint and sealed it with
polyurethane. 
How fun!
Switchplates
I’ll admit… this was extra. 
I used Samplize peel-and-stick color swatches to
cover the switchplates and cable covers in Benjamin Moore Lucerne.
I didn’t need to sand/prime/paint anything, and we can easily change up the color (if ever needed).
Ah, so nice…
Dresser/Wardrobe
Stay tuned to see how I added handles to the wardrobe and arranged clothes into clothes bins!
Cost
Setting up our kid’s room was the last big project of our Big Move of 2025! To relocate our bedroom
upstairs into the master bedroom 
,
we built a custom wardrobe 
and
redesigned our living room to accommodate new furniture 
. Time for the family to enjoy our new space! 
Shilpa Kobren is the Associate Director of Rare Disease Analysis at Harvard Medical School where she focuses on analyzing genomic sequencing data with patient clinical information to derive insights into human diseases. Shilpa lives in an 1890s urban apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and two energetic toddlers. She retains her sense of peace amid the chaos by creating and iteratively improving systems that optimize daily efficiency in her family's constrained living space.