Closet as a gun safe??

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S&W460

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Well at the end of the mouth we will be moving into our new house and i was going to buy a new safe for the family room. Well the wife says no way she dont want a big safe sitting in the family room.SOOO she said i could have the closet in the extra bedroom for my guns its 4' deep 5' wide and 8' tall. My question is any ideas how i can make this closet stronger? I do plan on replacing the closet door with a solid door and installing a dead bolt. Also im not worried about fire as much as people able to get to them easly.

Any ideas would be great...

Thanks.
 
Maybe you could talk to the guys at home depot or lowes, which ever one is closest and/or floats your boat, and ask their advice about reinforcing the closet.

I have very little knowledge when it comes to construction, so this is just my attempt at throwing out some advice for you... You could reinforce the joints/hinges around the door as well as the door itself, and maybe find a way to reinforce the walls of the closet, either with some hardwood, or something less flammable.

Best of luck to you! Maybe I offered some helpful hints.
 
If you have or had the money for purchasing a safe set aside, you could spend that money on a safe door only. If I was in a position where I had a secure room or large closet, the safe door would be an option for me. These safe doors typically install similar to a regular door.

I have heard of guys lining closets with steel sheeting, extra drywall/plywood, etc. Anything you can think of that would make it harder for a person to gain access would be good. Make sure to cover not only the sides but the ceiling also.
 
Hard to make a closet into a vault. Without extensive work and money. A start would be the door, as you mention, steel if you can. If there is room to make it open into the closet, verses out into the room, it will make it harder to cut the bolt on the lock. Another thing that would beef it up is to line the inside with cement board. It is used under tile and behind wood stoves. It is glass weave reinforced. Offers some fire protection and would slow someone a lot after the fairly easy task of breaking through drywall.

Edit: when you install the hinges replace all 1 1/2 inch screws with 3 1/2 into wall studs. Makes it harder to kick it off at the hinges. If you have an alarm system add that door to it.

If you happen to live in an old plaster and lath house they will get tired and choke to death on the dust before they break through.:)

Edit 2: If the door opens out you need to weld or peen the end of the hing pin or they can just be pulled out. No point in a lock at that point.
 
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Just bolt down a safe in the closet. use the rest of the space for other stuff.:D out of sight out of mind! plus if you leave there you can take it with you!
 
Closet as a gun safe

S&W460, What about placing a new safe snuggly inside your closet? Measure the space allowing for the safe door to open unobstructed. Use this dimension when shopping for your safe and since it will be out of sight, a casual visitor won't be tempted to case your home... There I've tossed my idea out there,Happy Shopping...
 
+1 on the safe in the closet. Without much effort you can get a pretty good safe for under $500, a really good one with lots of room for under $1000 at Costco or Dick's and probably other buyer's clubs and sporting goods stores that I haven't heard of here in Colorado. My local gun store, which does not have a web-site otherwise I'd give them a plug, is actually pretty competitive on safes. They seem to carry a number of Browning safes in stock most of the time. And, of course, you can get a quik safe, or sportsman safe, which I have bolted into the floor of the master bedroom closet at my house which holds 2-3 handguns and costs about $100. On the quik safe I can push four buttons in the proper sequence and am in the safe "quik". My long guns and extra handguns are in "a really good one with lots of room for under $1000" over at my dad's house a few miles away. When dad and I grow out of that safe, I'll have to buy a big safe for my house and fight the battle with the spouse over where it'll go- no extra closet space here!

How much would it cost to alter a typical closet to a really "secure" area for gun storage? A strong door with reinforced hinges and locks is wasted effort if a thief can use a hammer to break through some drywall and framing and be "in", bypassing your strong door. Material + good carpenter = ??? Which ever you do, a decent alarm system for the house might be good too... The alarm may hurry the thief along so that the he won't hang around long enough to figure out how to get the quik safe out of the floor, look for other valuables, etc.
 
Material + good carpenter = ???

Without exact material price. The ball park for me to do it with expanded metal under drywall on the outside and under cement board with 3/4 plywood over that on the inside with quality door. $3500 to $5000. Not including repainting the outside of the closet. I hate painting.
 
Here are some fun thoughts...

First, recognize that a seriously secure door is worthless if they can just use a hammer to smash through the drywall on either side or from an abutting bathroom or other room. And a ceiling crawlspace would be another access point.

It'll be a lot easier (and maybe cheaper) just to bolt a safe (or two) down inside the closet. Be sure the floor will support the weight too.

If you plan to make this closet your long term solution, check the sheetrock thickness. Replace with 1/2" or 5/8" for extra fire resistance, but that requires gutting the walls and re-sheetrocking them, new "mud"/spackle and paint.

You can place the safe at the end of a walk-in closet but the light will probably be behind you and your shadow fall just where you want to look. Mount the safe against one wall, clear of the door's arc, but situated so the safe door opens between you and the closet doorway. This way, if accessing the safe in an emergency, it forms a steel "shield" to cover you.

Depending on the layout/configuration of the closet and how much wall space surrounds the door (and if the wife will permit you) you can reinforce the entryway to deter 2-dimensional thinking thieves.

+1 on using 3½" screws on the hinge plates and strike plates. Forget using any standard residential knob locks or deadbolts. Just use a Medico® deadbolt. They are much harder to "bump" the lock and harder to pick. Also look at steel "surround" plates for the door strikes and locks to prevent wood splitting when kicked.

If the closet extends back & away from the door, obtain a piece of ¼" steel plate about 3-ft long cut to fit between the wall and door jamb. Screw this down to the wall studs every 6" vertically to prevent chopping through the sheetrock to reach inside & open the door. If the closet's long wall is parallel to the bedroom wall you'll have a lot harder time securing the closet from attack through the sheetrock.

Most cost effective (maybe)
I'd put the safe in the spare-room closet. Then invest in steel (not brass) hinges, long screws, a Medico® deadbolt on the closet door. Install a standard key lock knob on the bedroom door for when you're not at home and security pins for the windows. Then install an alarm system on that bedroom door & window.
 
If you ever plan to build a house you could include a real vault / panic room in the construction with out much trouble.

One thing I have considered is building a cement block vault in an existing basement. I would use an all steel door in a steel frame and fill the inside of the block with re-bar and concrete.
 
You can line the interior of the closet with fire resistant plywood ( this will offer some fire protection along with some added security beyond just sheetrock) and invest in a good metal door, however, this will cost you more than if you were just to buy a safe and anchor it to the floor. Fire resistant plywood can cost on average $60.00 a sheet but even a cheaper but quality metal door and frame can cost $700.00 the last time I looked. Plus as others have said, if you move from your home or you want to move the locations of your guns, your gonna have a problem. I'm looking into doing the same thing as you with a small office, however, I lucked out because my father works construction and every week he throws out undamaged heavy metal doors ranging in the $1,000+ range from office building reconstructions. ( And people wonder why these corporations can't keep afloat) Unless you have an "in" along those lines to save you a little $, just get a safe and bolt it to the floor and wall.
 
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If you disguise the closet, then no one will know it's there!
Have a floor-ceiling bookcase made to fit over the door opening. Remove the moulding around the door jamb. Use an internally secured piano hinge the length of the entire door, or just use door hinges. Reinforce the jamb to carry the weight of the bookcase. If you know a good carpenter you can do this for less than $500 with a painted bookcase.
Then, later, you can put a safe inside the closet.
Having a hidden "vault" (even though it's not as secure as a real vault) in your house is very cool. You will find that you use it for a lot more than guns.
 
Just make it all look like a normal closet in there with a normal door, but hide your secret button.

When you push the secret button, the walls should spin around and reveal racks upon racks of your guns.

In all seriousness the safe sounds like the most practical option when you factor the costs of building materials + your time.
 
Are you in Tornado country?

If so, consider a "Tornado Safe Room",,,

The reason I mention this is because they are like mini-vaults,,,
AND,,, Some states (like Oklahoma) give you tax incentives and such for building one.

Who cares what it is used for after it is built.

The company who installed one for my Sister did a great job,,,
And the Ceiling and Floor were steel reinforced as well.

Hope this helps

Aarond
 
I assume we're talking about a full-size gun safe, if you're talking about a box safe then don't bother reading the other paragraphs, becuase the closet will do fine. Just bolt it down.

I don't know the layout of your house, but I would really recomend still getting a safe full-size if that's what you wanted to do. There has to be somewhere other than the family room to put it. Maybe and unfinished room in the basement or some such place? There has to be room for it somehwere.

If you're concerned about getting it to what may be a difficult place in the house, I would advise you to look past it. My father has moved 2 full-size gun safes into his basement. Was it tricky? Sure, but they're never leaving that house, so it wasn't a huge issue in the long run. Moving a big safe isn't as hard as you think either. Most times all you need it a friend or two, and a few 2 foot sections of PVC pipe to roll it along.
 
A bunch of people already beat me to it. Put the safe in the closet. Sometimes we tend to overlook the obvious.
 
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