Telescoping Extending Closet Pole Ideas
Hardware thoughts for a tight closet problem. January 20, 2010
Question
We have a pending kitchen that also has to accommodate a built-in coat closet. The problem is that the best spot for this makes it eclipse the door casing coming into the room. The customer's current closet is 18 inches net depth inside. They hang their coats on pegs within the closet. Before we give up on classic coat hangers altogether I would like to investigate some kind of pullout rod. I've seen something like this before but can't seem to locate it now. Does anybody know of a coat rod that will allow you to orient clothing hangers 90º from the direction they ordinarily hang? What I want is to see the front buttons, not the profile of the shoulders. I would additionally like to have the whole mechanism pull forward and load from side to side rather than front to back. Can anybody recommend a solution here?
Forum Responses
(Cabinetmaking Forum)
From contributor C:
Look at Hefele, I believe they have one.
From contributor J:
To the original questioner: you stated how deep the cabinet will be, but not how wide it will be. I built this cabinet for a client that wanted a place to hang a change of clothes, but didn't want anything deeper than 12". As you can see, I just installed the closet rod between two plywood triangles and now she can hang whatever she likes in the limited depth.
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From the original questioner:
That is the orientation that I want, but I am hoping for something that could pull out so you can load the coats easier. Thanks for the suggestion.
From contributor B:
How about something along the lines of an upside down drawer box, mounted on heavy duty ball bearing slides, with the pole mounted in the orientation James has shown?
From contributor C:
Bernie that’s what I am thinking I would build. I used one a few years ago and
Hafele was the brand but it has been about ten years now. It was chrome and black the best I recall and mounted to the shelf above. It had a small metal loop on a track very compact and looked nice as well.
From the original questioner:
Building this as you suggest would give me the most amount of flexibility in size and would be something that would be very durable over time. I've been getting some great responses.
From the original questioner:
I haven't really had a lot of luck with these kinds of gizmos from
Hafele. They tend to be long on the golly-gee part but pretty cheaply built overall. My skepticism is probably based on some pull down closet rods I installed a couple of years ago. After about the third time we had to replace the plastic Tee-fitting that holds the pull down handle I kind of gave up on them. I'll take a look at the KV version but I'm inclined to go with something like contributor B suggested for now. If I come up with something worth looking at I will post a picture.
From contributor K:
If you are looking for it to telescope out make something strong, simple and unique.
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