How to Trick a Closet Into Thinking It's a Bedroom

If our home were being shown on HGTVs House Hunters, the room at the top of the stairs would be billed as a closet. Or, possibly, as having "great potential for a guest bathroom." ("Potential" being code for "this will be a lot of work.")

But here at This Old House: The "How-Real-People-Live" Episodes, we've re-purposed this 9x9 space as the domain of our younger daughter. 

At least we have supplied her with evidence for her memoirs on the inequity of life as a second-born child.

It isn't that we couldn't use another closet. Or another bathroom, both being in somewhat short supply in our old farmhouse. But needs must when the dwelling-devil drives, and so instead we tricked the space out into a tween girl's kingdom.

To pull off this space-redefining feat, we employed these tips and tools...

Loft bed. Okay, I can imagine what you might be thinking. "Well, duh! I read this far for this no-kidding tip?" But please don't leave just yet! I had to start here because this piece of furniture is what makes everything else in our Anna's room work. 

We got ours at a wonderfully quirky local shop called Seat 'n' Sleep, but loft

bed are widely available. There are two main benefits to installing one of these space-maximizing marvels in your closet-cum-bedroom:

• It maximizes limited space. Getting the sleeping platform up off the floor opens up real estate for so many other things (someplace to store clothing, for instance) and essentially creates another room-within-a-room. Anna's model came with a huge desk, storage, and shelves. Very handy.
• It proves your love for your child. Making up a loft bed requires a strong will, at least 20 free minutes, and, ideally, the ability to levitate above the bed while wrestling a fitted sheet and other bedding accouterments onto the mattress. If this isn't parental devotion, I don't know what is.

Bed-accessible light. Anna reads in bed every night and doesn't want to have to crawl down from her perch just to turn off the light. We found a darling table lamp at Target with a convenient pull-chain. Situated on top of a tallish bookshelf stationed right next to her bed, the light is within fairly easy reach of Anna from her bed.

She also keeps a small "bed bag"--just a gift bag from the dollar store--tied by a ribbon to a bedpost up in her sleeping chamber so she can access lip balm, tissues, and other nighttime necessities without having to climb down.

Hooks. (Lots.) As mentioned previously, Anna's room should by rights be a closet. Incarnating it into a bedroom means it does not, in fact, have a closet. (See "100-year-old farmhouse. Built when people didn't have very many clothes.") To mimic the benefits of separate storage in her smallish room, we slung one hook set-up over her door and hung another on the wall behind it. I think I got both at TJ Maxx. Or possibly Lowe's, one of our homes-away-from-home.

Under-storage. We simply cannot tolerate wasted floor space in a room this size. Anna's t-shirts reside under one of her dressers in a shallow fabric bin from Five Below.

Unique seating (with more storage). Anna wanted to create a "Book Nook" in the corner of her room between the wall and the end of her loft bed. We moved in her very narrow bookshelf and started looking for cozy seating where she could hunker down and read. She rejected a bean-bag chair, saying she wanted something with a high back that would support her neck.

Around this time, one of my Facebook friends shared this beguiling picture from createsinspire:

Naturally, we wanted this for Anna's literary lounge. So I did what any DIY-challenged mom with clever, generous parents does: I shared the link with my mom and innocently commented, "Wouldn't this be a cute idea for Anna's room?" Cue grandparent love. They'd found a dresser candidate within a couple weeks and brought the finished product over within a couple months. Yes, they actually are that wonderful. No, they are not available to loan out. (See "What I'm Hoping to Do This Summer," #13.) The high back gives Anna a place to lean against, and the remaining drawer now houses her scarf collection. A sweet white curtain closes off the space and seals the deal.

Maximum impact. With just 81 square feet to work with, we wanted to sneak in the girl-happiness factor wherever we could. I painted Anna's floor an electric/midnight blue of her choosing. She picked out a string of mini paper lantern lights, which we draped from her bed. A baubly chandelier from Lowe's is like jewelry hanging down from the ceiling.

I love and am so grateful for this room for my daughter. And, oh the joy of it, just last night, my daughter told me she loves her room. I'm thinking she might not even lament having the small bedroom to her older sister's much larger one when she writes the story of her life. 

While I'm waiting to see how that plays out, I'd be thrilled to have you share the small-space solutions that have worked for you. Because I've got this corner of the laundry room I need to trick into thinking it's a bathroom...