My home was built in 1980 and the floor plan called for the air conditioning air return next to the bathroom on the base of the wall. It makes it easy to change the filter.
The air conditioner unit is up in the attic over the bathroom and thus inside the wall a box of 30” by 16” running from floor to ceiling.
The bathroom is next to the kid’s bedrooms and it does not contain a linen closet! I don’t know about you, but I like to keep clean towels in bathroom. The more I looked at the air return I realized that if I moved the air return into the ceiling I could convert the air return shaft into a small but functional linen closet for the bathroom.
In the attic the challenge is that moving the air return into the ceiling, would put the air return duct work directly in the path that I use in the attic to get to the bulk of my storage space. So part of the challenge in moving the air return is to build a duct work that is strong enough to support my weight. After some quick calculations it turns out that the air return duct needed to be 7” above the top of the joist. I framed out a wooden box whose top was finished with two 1/2” sheets of plywood on it.
When my air conditioning guy was servicing my A/C he asked about the air return. He was surprised that it did not whistle when A/C was running. I kindly told him that I can do basic calculations to determine the cross section needed.
I removed the sheet rock on the common wall between the bathroom and the future closet. Then sheet rocked the closet, floated and painted.
I decided to build fixed shelves within the closet. You could easily have adjustable, but for me fixed shelving met my needs. The door and face to the closet is a 3/4 sheet of plywood. The plywood front over laps the opening by 2”. I cut out of the plywood face two doors, keeping the door frame intact.
To cut the doors, I set up the table saw’s rip fence for the desire door frame width. On the plywood door I marked all four corners of the door with light pencil lines. On the rip fence I drew reference lines perpendicular to the saw table. Start up the table saw and position the plywood so that the table saw blade will cut through the wood and come up just next to the beginning of the door cut. What this requires is that you hold the plywood at an angle with one side resting against the table and the fence. Then slowly lower the plywood down to the table and allow the table saw blade cut through.
Be careful! You are working without your blade guard and it is fairly easy for the saw blade to kick the stock out and cause injury.
Nail the plywood door frame against the wall. I trimmed out the plywood door frame with 3/4” quarter round molding. The plywood doors I finished out with lap molding.
