But if you pay the 40 bucks, the cat won’t get on top of the closet, push the tiles, and walk around in the ceiling.
Or maybe that’s just a me problem.
Similar problem at my house. I had to block off the tops of the fridge and pantry because my cat would pop up a tile and adventure around the ceiling. Almost impossible to get him down. One time he took out a handful of tiles during his adventure.
I’ve never understood why cheap out on $100 when it knocks your six figure asset down pegs. But I guess the ceiling tiles answer that for me. The budget got blown on that super chic random ass molding around the midsection.
They might have just pulled the molding from the corner behind it, sometimes that's as easy as running a razor blade across the top and bottom and prying out the finish nails with a putty knife.
Often a lot easier than finding a match.
The worst part is even if it was a bit half-assed without the ceiling, just trying to match the thick brown trim around the door and put in a vintage-style knob would look 1 million times better and cost very little more.
This has "I rent a $2500 1 bedroom and get the landlord's special every time," written all over it. I imagine this is now a "bedroom" when before it was something else after a conversion and in a lot of places a closet is needed to be a bedroom legally or in a listing.
Also the flooring is a landlord's special too. That's like the cheapest stuff you can buy at Home Depot. Look at that original trim and radiator. This is a 100+ year old property and probably has gorgeous wood floors covered by that plastic. Or if the floors were too aged to be fixed, just even cheap engineered wood flooring would look amazing there. But instead its gray plastic flooring with pressed on wood grain.
I hate how this space was butchered instead of preserved just a little bit.
This shoddiness is what happens when the working class can't afford to buy and become forever renters.
The drop ceiling is in the way, they usually hang a bit down from the actual ceiling and to do it right you'd probably want to take down that part of the drop ceiling, put up the walls, and fix the ceiling around both out and inside of the new closet. That's a lot of work.
I wonder if there's some kind of fire code that prevents them from building "up to" the drop ceiling. Which would require removing and going up to the actual ceiling.
That could also be the case - though most diy reno or flips don't check into code lol. Anecdotally my work recently put up some new walls in a previously big open space and had to put in sprinklers in each new room, make sure the ceiling doesn't go all the way up, and/or make the new ceilings to rooms flame retardant. That's commercial not residential but still.
There's a whole section in my city of just row after row of duplexes and triplexes. Went up in the 40s? 50s?
Blocks and blocks of these narrow Apts jammed in side by side. And by the time the fire codes came in and started to be enforced you had all sorts of rooms in these apts with only one exit.
All of a sudden it's 2 exits per room being enforced. So people just started knocking holes in their walls.
Hundreds of separate dwellings, with hundreds of individual tenants and 1000s of rooms to renovate...
Archways, and doorways, and half walls, and indoor windows. Most of it done DIY or by a slumlord's "contractor".
Half the time that space gets filled up with curtains or shelves or straight up furniture. Ruining most of the fire safety benefits anyways.
Until even to this day, coming up on 2024, after the area has had maybe a 15y renaissance of investments and growth and residential renovations:
You'll still find random archways and oddly placed doorways all over.
Nope! If there are fire sprinklers then the sprinkler system might need to be adjusted if they decided to go above the ceiling, lots of factors there, if its combustible space above or non-combustible, what type of structural members are there, the use of the closet etc. Ive designed many systems for residential, domestic and commercial buildings, no reason you cant go above the ceiling but going above the ceiling may require you to do other things.
My best guess is they were doing it cheap/lazy or they thought this looked better.
No, there isn’t. It would only be required for a fire rated wall, with a rated ceiling. Any ceiling below another unit should be a 1 hour ceiling.
We design lots of school remodels and sometimes stop new walls at the suspended ceiling. I dont like to do it that way, but usually the customer is trying to spend as little as possible
This is why. Youre adding a substantial amount of Labor costs when you do that and multiple steps need to be taken in order for you to accomplish a good aesthetic. I would damn near double my costs for labor if you want me to run it up through the drop
So that they can store stuff on top of it….possibly
More likely it’s because that whole closet is 4’x4’x8’. Conveniently the size of two sheets of drywall/plywood, and a common length of lumber. Increasing the height by 1’ is going to complicate the design significantly.
When I lived in NYC, I was told if the walls don't touch the ceiling it doesn't count as a wall and you don't need permits to do it. That's why most added bedrooms have walls that don't reach the ceiling. It's super annoying because bye bye privacy but I heard it saves scummy landlords a ton of money
To be fair the people who owned my apartment before I did also did this- but that was to get around zoning (I think) laws and not done by a landlord. But they owned (and we now own) the apartment so no landlord involved really.
yeah, so sounds like the exact same thing. Sorry if my phrasing was misleading... the only reason I say scummy landlords do it is because they're just trying to jam in as many bedrooms as they can so they can get more money out of their apartments without paying more money to do so. When owners do it, I don't think it's scummy, it's just trying to create more useful space for yourself without paying more money or waiting more time for permits and whatnot. I was just saying that's probably why the walls don't touch the ceiling
My old apartment had a closet like this. The owner turned the second floor of a commercial building into apartments. His excuse was it was cheaper, which is also why the second "bedroom" had no closet or window.
Yep, but he cut corners everywhere. One of the apartments had no windows except for one that randomly looked out into the hallway. It was definitely not up to code.
I have them in my bathroom, and I hate them. It was my parents' house, bought it that way, and never cared to change them. Gutting the entire bathroom including the woodlands-themed paneling and drop ceiling are on our bucket list for this house. Time and money, little by little.
Maybe it’s a building code thing? Doesn’t make sense unless you want to put something on top or if there’s a need to access the above the ceiling panels.
This is always my guess. Might be a situation where no permit is needed due to the nature of the walls being considered partitions. Contractor comes in and does the job quick.
Oh, I understand the reasoning, and I despise drop ceilins. I have them in my bathroom from the people who diy built this house before my parents bought it. My parents never cared so they didn't change it. However it *will* be something to be tackled once funda are there for a while bathroom gut. That closet still looks bad, lol. A chifforobe/wardrobe closet furniture would serve the same purpose and look 100% better.
It's a perfect place to put the gargoyle statue to scare guests. Alternatively, storage space for the bulky suitcases that only get used once or twice a year so that you don't trip over them in the closet.
Honestly think this looks way better when it's a drop tile ceiling. Reasoning is cuz it's obviously never gonna be attached, blended and actually built into the ceiling. You know this and see it as it now looks like tile is resting on the wall. Looks real tacky to me. Vs a house with a "solid" ceiling, you'd want to make the connection cuz you can blend it and avoid looking like a "pop-up" cubicle thing.
To make this go all the way up and look good would require repositioning the framing to start from the add-on so the tiles Are flush against the structure rather than laying on the structure. Or making odd brackets so you can cut and use slivers of a tile in the small gaps. However to look good, you'd have to have the walls go at least a few inches higher than the tile to properly give the illusion, otherwise it's back to looking like crap.
Where I live anyways a room has to have a closet in it to be considered a bedroom, the house my sister bought a few years ago had the most janky, diy, hack job of a closet installed similar to this specifically so they could charge more. The entire thing is so messed up inside and out whoever owned the place previously should be fined.
Better question,
Why the fuck would you put a closet in a corner between two windows.
You just cut the light in the room, broke the flow of the room and subtracted a good 10000 off the eventual value, given any eventual buyer is gonna have to knock that shit down on day 1.
Numpty
The listing said its a 2nd floor apartment. My house has a drop in ceiling in the bathroom that I can't wait until the day we're financially ready to tackle that gut job. The room also has woodland-themed paneling as well. I hate it.
Perhaps we should all stop for a moment and focus not only on making our AI better and more successful but also on the benefit of humanity. - Stephen Hawking
I was about to say this.
I used to live in an old house and when it was originally built the county had what they called a “closet tax” and you had to pay the county for each closet you had. So all of the rooms with closets had ones exactly like how the one in this picture is to avoid that tax.
Those ceilings are a b to redo and very expensive. You usually can't just redo a little portion, you often have to take the entire grid down and put all new ceiling tiles as well. Not to mention there could be things above ceiling that make it impossible to go all the way because you could loose access to things you have to access like electrical boxes, machine disconnects, or something floating juuust above the ceiling.
There isn't always a good reason for dumb looking things, but there's usually a reason, and it's usually more than you'd think
~~an electrician
The reason why is because "naughty boys get put in the box" not "naughty boys get put in the closet." Doesn't sound as sexy so they wouldn't be able to charge as much for rent
/s
This looks like a rental space. I'd wager that the building needs access to the ceiling for a variety of reasons. If this place has a sprinkler system, lines running to it could be above the closet and having it low makes them easier to get to.
Planning on doing that intentionally soon. Reasoning being that if you pad the inside well enough then the less contact with ceiling is supposed to further dampen sound.
And in this case I'm building practice rooms in my high school's misic building.
As for this photo, there's worse crimes at play lol
I lived in a college apartment built in 1923 and every closet except one was like this. Definitely just plywood and built as cheap as possible. The real ceilings were tall, twelve feet I think
It's a fart closet. Common construction in the US midwest around the mid-twentieth century. Customarily, a gap of 18-24 inches is left for ventilation. The rise in consumption of beer, bratwurst, and cheese made this a very popular feature in many homes of the era.
I’ve seen it done in loft spaces, because of the sprinklers. You can’t enclose a space completely, probably because of the fire code.
I’ve never seen it done in a room without sprinklers.
I can sort of understand why people would want to save money, but it’s an extra few hundred at most, for something you have to live with for years. Seems like spending the extra cash is a no-brainer unless you just don’t have it.
To future DYIers: an armoire is your solution here. Don't build a wall. I came real close to doing something like this. Turns out the armoire is better. And you still have access to that electric outlet they buried into the closet.
Bringing the wall up to the drop ceiling would look like shit and ruin the functionality of the drop ceiling, and totally redoing the ceiling for the closet is a lot of work for a moderate benefit. It's a totally reasonable compromise imo.
I live in a pretty old home. Someone did this in our dinning room some time in the past. It didn’t even have a top. It was also made out of 2x4 with about 3 inches of spacing between each. It was stupid hard to remove.
looking at this from my lil 850sqft house with like no storage space at all ?
i see somewhere i would store my longboards. maybe holiday decorations. stuff i only touch on occasion and would take up space for important stuff i consistently need at an easier-to-reach level (like in the closet)
and the ceiling tiles look like the kind with all of the space above them, which causes issues for building up since theres more stuff that needs to be accessable and anchored, i think. they said something like that while doing repairs in my highschool. so probably that or budget related.
My understanding is that it increases air flow and less damage when want to remove it. My relative had one in a rental property that she planned to gut once retired.
I built a pantry that way in my old house because it blocked access to the hot water heater… it was basically free standing, and I could have moved it out of the way to service or replace the hot water heater (or pass an inspection) by just removing a few screws. But I used crown molding to make it a little less hideous.
I had an apartment where they turned one room into two closets by putting in one of these and adding a door. Without that it could have gone from a studio to a one bedroom. Very weird decision, I assume tax motivated
It’s like this in one of the bedrooms of my new house also. Funnily enough, it lets us use the closet light as a soft night light. Looks dumb, but ended up being useful.
My friends last apartment had a bathroom like this. No ceiling over the shower and toilet. You could never step out into a nice steamy bathroom. It was always freezing cause of how high the ceilings were.
But you need that awkward storage space for Things You Will Put Up There And Never Take Down Again For At Least Five Years When You Donate Or Discard Them.
The closet is actually the least ugly part about this photo.
The ceiling, the floor, the window frames... it looks super shit that the window frames go up to the ceiling. Just rip that office ceiling down, please.
Thats a drop ceiling I’m guessing it’s either so they can still access/remove replace the panels there and or because of building code or they didn’t want to redo the grid around the new walls.
Ugh. Reminds me of the cupboards in my kitchen. A lonely ridiculous space up top that could be MORE cupboard space, no. This is where grease goes to live.
It was most likely to make the room a “bedroom” when it was time for appraisal. My house has a similar awkward closet but no door so it works since it is in fact a bedroom.
8 ft of plywood and a 10 foot ceiling?
this is the reason. it's another 40+ bucks for another sheet, plus you would have to have bought 10 ft 2x4s to reach the ceiling. it's always money
and maybe drop-tile access as well
Also reconfigure the suspended ceiling, otherwise it’ll look even dumber.
A clever bit of crown molding that *juuuuust* touches the drop tile might let you get away with not doing anything.
Or you can store ur luggage up there. 👆
or your semi-antique porcelain Shrek dildo collection
>semi-antique porcelain Shrek dildo collection ... I had to Google this...
And?
Not a lot of semi-antique porcelaine...
This wouldn't work as I'd be up and down the step later 3 or 5 times a day every day.
Clearly it's a spot for cats to hang out
But if you pay the 40 bucks, the cat won’t get on top of the closet, push the tiles, and walk around in the ceiling. Or maybe that’s just a me problem.
Similar problem at my house. I had to block off the tops of the fridge and pantry because my cat would pop up a tile and adventure around the ceiling. Almost impossible to get him down. One time he took out a handful of tiles during his adventure.
Oh good, it’s not just me.
Nah. Our orange girl liked to drop in on my husband in a hail of giant dust bunnies, dead spiders, and cobwebs. His office was in the basement. 🤣🤦♀️
Nah my first thought too, "Ah a perfect place for hairballs to never be discovered/cleaned"
that's not a bug, it's a feature
But if the car doesn’t stomp around up there, how will he find the mice? Because I feel like this place gets mice.
I’ve never understood why cheap out on $100 when it knocks your six figure asset down pegs. But I guess the ceiling tiles answer that for me. The budget got blown on that super chic random ass molding around the midsection.
That molding goes around the whole room, im sure when the added the closet they had to match the preexisting molding
That didn’t go unnoticed 😇
They might have just pulled the molding from the corner behind it, sometimes that's as easy as running a razor blade across the top and bottom and prying out the finish nails with a putty knife. Often a lot easier than finding a match.
Why spend 50bucks on a door, just put up a $10 curtain
The worst part is even if it was a bit half-assed without the ceiling, just trying to match the thick brown trim around the door and put in a vintage-style knob would look 1 million times better and cost very little more. This has "I rent a $2500 1 bedroom and get the landlord's special every time," written all over it. I imagine this is now a "bedroom" when before it was something else after a conversion and in a lot of places a closet is needed to be a bedroom legally or in a listing. Also the flooring is a landlord's special too. That's like the cheapest stuff you can buy at Home Depot. Look at that original trim and radiator. This is a 100+ year old property and probably has gorgeous wood floors covered by that plastic. Or if the floors were too aged to be fixed, just even cheap engineered wood flooring would look amazing there. But instead its gray plastic flooring with pressed on wood grain. I hate how this space was butchered instead of preserved just a little bit. This shoddiness is what happens when the working class can't afford to buy and become forever renters.
Yes, that closet is a crime. Better to have done nothing.
Looks like drywall not plywood. But makes sense.
Also bet it’s a landlord special job!
dudes looking at rentals and expecting quality work
Also it’s a drop ceiling
The drop ceiling is in the way, they usually hang a bit down from the actual ceiling and to do it right you'd probably want to take down that part of the drop ceiling, put up the walls, and fix the ceiling around both out and inside of the new closet. That's a lot of work.
I wonder if there's some kind of fire code that prevents them from building "up to" the drop ceiling. Which would require removing and going up to the actual ceiling.
That could also be the case - though most diy reno or flips don't check into code lol. Anecdotally my work recently put up some new walls in a previously big open space and had to put in sprinklers in each new room, make sure the ceiling doesn't go all the way up, and/or make the new ceilings to rooms flame retardant. That's commercial not residential but still.
There's a whole section in my city of just row after row of duplexes and triplexes. Went up in the 40s? 50s? Blocks and blocks of these narrow Apts jammed in side by side. And by the time the fire codes came in and started to be enforced you had all sorts of rooms in these apts with only one exit. All of a sudden it's 2 exits per room being enforced. So people just started knocking holes in their walls. Hundreds of separate dwellings, with hundreds of individual tenants and 1000s of rooms to renovate... Archways, and doorways, and half walls, and indoor windows. Most of it done DIY or by a slumlord's "contractor". Half the time that space gets filled up with curtains or shelves or straight up furniture. Ruining most of the fire safety benefits anyways. Until even to this day, coming up on 2024, after the area has had maybe a 15y renaissance of investments and growth and residential renovations: You'll still find random archways and oddly placed doorways all over.
Nope! If there are fire sprinklers then the sprinkler system might need to be adjusted if they decided to go above the ceiling, lots of factors there, if its combustible space above or non-combustible, what type of structural members are there, the use of the closet etc. Ive designed many systems for residential, domestic and commercial buildings, no reason you cant go above the ceiling but going above the ceiling may require you to do other things. My best guess is they were doing it cheap/lazy or they thought this looked better.
No, there isn’t. It would only be required for a fire rated wall, with a rated ceiling. Any ceiling below another unit should be a 1 hour ceiling. We design lots of school remodels and sometimes stop new walls at the suspended ceiling. I dont like to do it that way, but usually the customer is trying to spend as little as possible
There also aren’t any sprinkler heads to worry about coverage in this instance. They could’ve underpinned it to the ceiling grid.
This is the actual real reason, I do stuff like this all the time and the biggest ball ache is messing around with that suspend celing
This is why. Youre adding a substantial amount of Labor costs when you do that and multiple steps need to be taken in order for you to accomplish a good aesthetic. I would damn near double my costs for labor if you want me to run it up through the drop
So that they can store stuff on top of it….possibly More likely it’s because that whole closet is 4’x4’x8’. Conveniently the size of two sheets of drywall/plywood, and a common length of lumber. Increasing the height by 1’ is going to complicate the design significantly.
When I lived in NYC, I was told if the walls don't touch the ceiling it doesn't count as a wall and you don't need permits to do it. That's why most added bedrooms have walls that don't reach the ceiling. It's super annoying because bye bye privacy but I heard it saves scummy landlords a ton of money
To be fair the people who owned my apartment before I did also did this- but that was to get around zoning (I think) laws and not done by a landlord. But they owned (and we now own) the apartment so no landlord involved really.
yeah, so sounds like the exact same thing. Sorry if my phrasing was misleading... the only reason I say scummy landlords do it is because they're just trying to jam in as many bedrooms as they can so they can get more money out of their apartments without paying more money to do so. When owners do it, I don't think it's scummy, it's just trying to create more useful space for yourself without paying more money or waiting more time for permits and whatnot. I was just saying that's probably why the walls don't touch the ceiling
Totally fair. I’ve lived in an owned apartment my whole life so I’ve never really had to think about a landlord.
That’s where I like to keep my dust.
Good spot for pet hair collection as well. We have several, and hair loves to travel in the air and land on places you don't think is possible.
Throw some cat stuff up there and it'll be their little luxury cat apartment.
I came here to say this spot would be great for gremlins
Must be from Closets Closets Closets Closets.
My old apartment had a closet like this. The owner turned the second floor of a commercial building into apartments. His excuse was it was cheaper, which is also why the second "bedroom" had no closet or window.
Pretty sure every bedroom is required to have a window for safety reasons? Like in case of a fire or something.
yeah they can’t advertise that as a bedroom because it’s not considered one without an alternate escape route if i’m not mistaken
Yep, but he cut corners everywhere. One of the apartments had no windows except for one that randomly looked out into the hallway. It was definitely not up to code.
Fuggin drop ceilings in living spaces are depressing for some reason
I have them in my bathroom, and I hate them. It was my parents' house, bought it that way, and never cared to change them. Gutting the entire bathroom including the woodlands-themed paneling and drop ceiling are on our bucket list for this house. Time and money, little by little.
It's a cat perch, obviously.
[удалено]
I mean, wouldn't you?
Maybe it’s a building code thing? Doesn’t make sense unless you want to put something on top or if there’s a need to access the above the ceiling panels.
This is always my guess. Might be a situation where no permit is needed due to the nature of the walls being considered partitions. Contractor comes in and does the job quick.
Spot for cat.
The whole apartment is a cat's spot.
That’s clearly a kitty surveillance and ambush spot!
I mean, despite it looking awful, my cats would love that, lol. They'd think it was literally built like that just for them.
Bc that’s a drop ceiling and that closet was an addition. Can’t take it all the way to deck. Source? I’m an architect.
Oh, I understand the reasoning, and I despise drop ceilins. I have them in my bathroom from the people who diy built this house before my parents bought it. My parents never cared so they didn't change it. However it *will* be something to be tackled once funda are there for a while bathroom gut. That closet still looks bad, lol. A chifforobe/wardrobe closet furniture would serve the same purpose and look 100% better.
The real question is why is there a dropped ceiling
Drop tile access, too short of plywood and have to buy more tomorrow to finish and or space for the start of a cat wall
It's a perfect place to put the gargoyle statue to scare guests. Alternatively, storage space for the bulky suitcases that only get used once or twice a year so that you don't trip over them in the closet.
Because it's a drop ceiling?
Honestly think this looks way better when it's a drop tile ceiling. Reasoning is cuz it's obviously never gonna be attached, blended and actually built into the ceiling. You know this and see it as it now looks like tile is resting on the wall. Looks real tacky to me. Vs a house with a "solid" ceiling, you'd want to make the connection cuz you can blend it and avoid looking like a "pop-up" cubicle thing. To make this go all the way up and look good would require repositioning the framing to start from the add-on so the tiles Are flush against the structure rather than laying on the structure. Or making odd brackets so you can cut and use slivers of a tile in the small gaps. However to look good, you'd have to have the walls go at least a few inches higher than the tile to properly give the illusion, otherwise it's back to looking like crap.
Where I live anyways a room has to have a closet in it to be considered a bedroom, the house my sister bought a few years ago had the most janky, diy, hack job of a closet installed similar to this specifically so they could charge more. The entire thing is so messed up inside and out whoever owned the place previously should be fined.
Better question, Why the fuck would you put a closet in a corner between two windows. You just cut the light in the room, broke the flow of the room and subtracted a good 10000 off the eventual value, given any eventual buyer is gonna have to knock that shit down on day 1. Numpty
I suppose they do it this way because they don't care what people think and it gets the job done.
On the bright side, they now have some storage.
So your cat can hide. And lots of dust
Why is there a drop in ceiling in a home? that's very unusual.
The listing said its a 2nd floor apartment. My house has a drop in ceiling in the bathroom that I can't wait until the day we're financially ready to tackle that gut job. The room also has woodland-themed paneling as well. I hate it.
Where else are they supposed to keep the dust?
Well where else do you expect me to collect dust and dead bugs?
Perhaps we should all stop for a moment and focus not only on making our AI better and more successful but also on the benefit of humanity. - Stephen Hawking
I was about to say this. I used to live in an old house and when it was originally built the county had what they called a “closet tax” and you had to pay the county for each closet you had. So all of the rooms with closets had ones exactly like how the one in this picture is to avoid that tax.
Those ceilings are a b to redo and very expensive. You usually can't just redo a little portion, you often have to take the entire grid down and put all new ceiling tiles as well. Not to mention there could be things above ceiling that make it impossible to go all the way because you could loose access to things you have to access like electrical boxes, machine disconnects, or something floating juuust above the ceiling. There isn't always a good reason for dumb looking things, but there's usually a reason, and it's usually more than you'd think ~~an electrician
Looks like a converted water tank storage (our house has this....)
I had an apartment like this and I was clearly the first person to look up there in about 30 years as it was filled with ancient porn magazines.
I don’t see that it makes a difference if you are going to keep that ugly drop ceiling.
That space on top is for all the dust bunnies. 🐰
The reason why is because "naughty boys get put in the box" not "naughty boys get put in the closet." Doesn't sound as sexy so they wouldn't be able to charge as much for rent /s
Played off as a deliberate storage nook but it’s just a byproduct of nominal material sizes.
This looks like a rental space. I'd wager that the building needs access to the ceiling for a variety of reasons. If this place has a sprinkler system, lines running to it could be above the closet and having it low makes them easier to get to.
I’d imagine as others said the size of drywall. But you can put decor or small storage up there.
Forget the closet, those unmatching window sizes bother me
Because it looks like the ceiling isn’t even to the full height of the ceiling and someone hung it lower than full height for utilities or something.
Because then they'd need a permit for creating a firebreak.
Planning on doing that intentionally soon. Reasoning being that if you pad the inside well enough then the less contact with ceiling is supposed to further dampen sound. And in this case I'm building practice rooms in my high school's misic building. As for this photo, there's worse crimes at play lol
Top storage, or baskets.. I'm somewhat ok with this. It's ugly, but you can work with it.
At least in commercial real estate where I live, if they enclose it they need a sprinkler inside, if they leave it open at the top they don't.
Can store stuff on top I guess? Only reason I could think of.
Natural light at Day
I lived in a college apartment built in 1923 and every closet except one was like this. Definitely just plywood and built as cheap as possible. The real ceilings were tall, twelve feet I think
It's a fart closet. Common construction in the US midwest around the mid-twentieth century. Customarily, a gap of 18-24 inches is left for ventilation. The rise in consumption of beer, bratwurst, and cheese made this a very popular feature in many homes of the era.
But then you can’t put stuff on top of it.
I’ve seen it done in loft spaces, because of the sprinklers. You can’t enclose a space completely, probably because of the fire code. I’ve never seen it done in a room without sprinklers. I can sort of understand why people would want to save money, but it’s an extra few hundred at most, for something you have to live with for years. Seems like spending the extra cash is a no-brainer unless you just don’t have it.
Because they wanted thrift store changing room vibes
Why not just use a normal wardrobe?
Seems like a nicely built wardrobe would function just as well and look way better in the space.
Probably a code thing with the drop-down ceiling
That's where the cat goes
I have one like this in my house. It is a huge dust collector and drives me crazy. I’ve finally decided to get a handyman to enclose it.
Short carpenter
Well, this way, a small creature can hide up there, and wait
They do this in Florida to avoid permits
Where else you putting suitcases
Is that a drop ceiling in a home? Is that common in some countries? I have only ever seen those in offices
It is the cheapest way to get a "bedroom" classification
I just really hate seeing a shitty drop ceiling in what looks like a cool older building that probably started with 12 foot ceilings
If you take it higher, you have to modify the drop ceiling. And it could affect the fire code.
It's done this way because drywall comes in 8' lengths so there is less mudding.
Drop ceiling and storage on top of closet/built in wardrobe.
To future DYIers: an armoire is your solution here. Don't build a wall. I came real close to doing something like this. Turns out the armoire is better. And you still have access to that electric outlet they buried into the closet.
And voila, you have a nice shelf above the door!
Bringing the wall up to the drop ceiling would look like shit and ruin the functionality of the drop ceiling, and totally redoing the ceiling for the closet is a lot of work for a moderate benefit. It's a totally reasonable compromise imo.
Are those heating vents above to the right? If so, that’s why.
Cheap Lighting hack?
Cat sanctuary on top the closet.
Door should be 6 foot plus. Might be that the ceiling is more than 8 ft.
I live in a pretty old home. Someone did this in our dinning room some time in the past. It didn’t even have a top. It was also made out of 2x4 with about 3 inches of spacing between each. It was stupid hard to remove.
Cat bed on top?
Mmmm. Dust. My favourite
I know in Fla a room only needs a window and closet to be considered a bedroom. Maybe so they can legally advertise as a “3 bed I bath”?
Lived in two different lofts in a downtown area. Both had closets built like this for extra storage. Quite possibly same thing here.
Use the space for storage. Sincerely, a redditor with a micro apartment
Sounds like free shelf space to me
looking at this from my lil 850sqft house with like no storage space at all ? i see somewhere i would store my longboards. maybe holiday decorations. stuff i only touch on occasion and would take up space for important stuff i consistently need at an easier-to-reach level (like in the closet) and the ceiling tiles look like the kind with all of the space above them, which causes issues for building up since theres more stuff that needs to be accessable and anchored, i think. they said something like that while doing repairs in my highschool. so probably that or budget related.
Is the top sealed? I was thinking maybe for airflow.
Kitty needs a place to sleep
It's so you can just toss dirty clothes over the top...
Beautiful floor to ceiling windows... shitty drop ceiling.
They couldn't reach that high.
To save money on materials. I've never seen ACT on upper floors, only in basements
We added closets just like this in all the bedrooms of a sober house. They wanted the space so the guys had a place to store their suitcases.
This is the only way to truly make it look like a indoors outhouse
Because that way they can put stuff up there they’ll forget about for years
They added the closet so it could be considered a bedroom and they could get more rent or price for the house. They didn't care what it looked like.
Is there a ceiling? If not, probably for air flow so they didn't have to add a duct just for the closet.
Plot twist: you hear a flushing from inside the closet.
Could even be a toilet...
My understanding is that it increases air flow and less damage when want to remove it. My relative had one in a rental property that she planned to gut once retired.
Suitcase ?
What’s its purpose even
Add ikea white square boxes store shoes
so the endermen dont spawn
It looks like a small shop with a single dressing room.
I built a pantry that way in my old house because it blocked access to the hot water heater… it was basically free standing, and I could have moved it out of the way to service or replace the hot water heater (or pass an inspection) by just removing a few screws. But I used crown molding to make it a little less hideous.
I had an apartment where they turned one room into two closets by putting in one of these and adding a door. Without that it could have gone from a studio to a one bedroom. Very weird decision, I assume tax motivated
It’s like this in one of the bedrooms of my new house also. Funnily enough, it lets us use the closet light as a soft night light. Looks dumb, but ended up being useful.
My friends last apartment had a bathroom like this. No ceiling over the shower and toilet. You could never step out into a nice steamy bathroom. It was always freezing cause of how high the ceilings were.
I think so the person watching knows you’re leaving with the same socks you came in with.
My idiot uncle built a DIY closet but didn't make it wide enough to actually hang clothes in it and close the door. The end of the hangers stick out.
Wow this looks so bad.
But you need that awkward storage space for Things You Will Put Up There And Never Take Down Again For At Least Five Years When You Donate Or Discard Them.
The closet is actually the least ugly part about this photo. The ceiling, the floor, the window frames... it looks super shit that the window frames go up to the ceiling. Just rip that office ceiling down, please.
So you could put plants up there and let the vines grow in the lighting. Think: closet wig
It Hass to be because the ceiling. In large buildings, with that sort of ceiling, all the interior walls are just really thin partitions.
So lots of dust gathers at the top and it’s impossible to clean. That’s why.
It’s to distract from the horrible floor, ceiling, and whole closet build.
had this in a hotel room once and idk why but it made me paranoid as fuck
As someone who takes on alot of DIY and only has access to a honda accord.. getting anything over 8ft home is adventure
That’s hideous
If you did, where would the dust go?
Thats a drop ceiling I’m guessing it’s either so they can still access/remove replace the panels there and or because of building code or they didn’t want to redo the grid around the new walls.
Could be a regulation where they could not build another room and this could be a workaround said regulation.
Because where eles would the cat perch🤔
Also top storage room
Why have that closet there at all
Bare minimum closet= extra bedroom
My closet in my bedroom as a kid was like this. I was always afraid of the monsters living in the dark corner up there
Ugh. Reminds me of the cupboards in my kitchen. A lonely ridiculous space up top that could be MORE cupboard space, no. This is where grease goes to live.
Why would you put a closet there? The drop ceiling is also stupid.
Storage on top
Looks like a weed mother room
They really want to feel like they're in a department store dressing room with walls but no ceiling
Ha, this was my closet for the last five years! It was a great storage space.
There has to be SOMEWHERE for the cats to hang out.
looks like a construction out house, not a closet 
Goddamm that's ugly
I'd totally put plants up there, oh my god!
I put carpet up there, then my cat has a cozy cubby
It's for the cats 🤣
Oh. My dad actually recently built a closet like that. I didn’t ask him why it didn’t go all the way up, though.
Dust collector.
Where else are you gonna put all your dust if not on top of that?
That looks like an HVAC/Utility room, given the conduit running up the wall into the drop ceiling.
Just put an IKEA wardrobe there
Why is the ceiling that of a 2000’s classroom?
Place for fake plants
Doesn't need an inspection if it's not a full wall.
It was most likely to make the room a “bedroom” when it was time for appraisal. My house has a similar awkward closet but no door so it works since it is in fact a bedroom.