is there no adjacent room that you can knock a wall down.. now you're going to have three doors in one room, have you consulted an arcitect(please forgive bad spelling).. is there any way you can post a pic.

hi plantmaster
thanks for your reply...we are extreme DIYers (as in very cheap) so we can't really use an architect. but i am sure they would know exactly what to do! this is just a little 4 foot by 2 foot closet in a corner. the two outer walls of the "closet to be" are both outside masonry walls of our house, so can't knock through those.. i will see if i can get a picture, just wondering if anyone had a put a closet inside the walls of their little, old bedrooms and had any insights. i would be ok with a bifold door, but not thrilled.. kren

FWIW, with bifold doors you are not limited to those ugly cheap things from the home center. Masonite makes some beautiful bifold doors (this one might match your other doors; go here, click "application" and then "bifold" to see all the doors that come in a bifold option) and can be ordered through Home Depot or lumberyards. The typical passage door is something like 32", so if you used a 32" bifold to match you'd only be looking at 8" on each side (48-32=16, 16/2=8) to reach into which is no big whoop at all. If you had to go down to a 30" the sides would become 9" deep. Again, no biggie.

Also, you aren't trapped into those blasted tracks people usually put bifold doors on. In my previous house a swinging door into the master bathroom would have eaten a ridiculous amount of space (note, we had FIVE doors in that 12x13 bedroom: entry, bathroom, linen closet, and two small reach-in closets), so we hung a bifold door on regular door hinges so it took up very little room and looked so much nicer. Also, since it swung completely out of the way, we gained about 2" in the usable doorway width because with that track setup you need to allow room for the door itself to stack. Here's a picture - wish I had a better one but we moved out last September:
{{!gwi}}
(We were going to replace the painted doors with oak ones to match the trim and bathroom door but ended up selling the house before we came up with the money to do so.)

johnmari, thanks very much! i had no idea that you could get a regular wood masonite door in bifold form! and in part because we are renovating not restoring (original house style and windows already butchered), we are very happy to have an option that allows us to shop at HD.
also now i have a better idea of just how many doors one can force into a 12 x 13 room. i had already given up on the frustrating track idea, but it's good to get that confirmed with someone else's idea. thanks kren

You are very welcome, kren, and glad I could help.

Just for reference, this is the floorplan of the bedroom area in that house - first-floor master, thus the references to kitchen and foyer, and we were lucky enough to have the space for a nice master bath which I miss horribly. I have no idea why I didn't put the bathroom door on there. :-) I had wanted to convert the two "larger" closets (which were only about 36" wide) into a single wider one but it never happened - that was supposed to be a 15-year house that turned out to be a {{!gwi}}

We were very pleased with the quality of the Masonite brand solid wood doors. IIRC it took about 2-3 weeks to get the bifold door ordered through HD. Go to the Millwork desk, near the window displays, and someone should be able to help you.

Oh, and we used a magnetic catch (like is often used on cabinets) to hold it closed, with a dummy knob, rather than installing a conventional latched knob. SO much easier!

Neither of our bedrooms had closets. This is what we did in our bedroom and plan to build one similar in the second bedroom. The closets are built in but look more like a free standing wardrobe. They are built out of wainscot and the doors are also built out of wainscot. Hope this helps.

marylu and johnmari, thanks to you both. now i have two good ideas...decisions, decisions...well and of course finding time to get the project done too! kren