I love finding unused space for storage. Nothing bothers me more than a wall that obviously hides a large void behind it. Â Or a built-in bench that could have been perfect for extra storage.
While on the hunt for creative ways to store more, I found 20 brilliant ways to add built-in beauty AND storage to your home. You can see some above, but there’s plenty more in this curated collection of storage ideas that I put together for you. Enjoy.
Can I get a huge cheer and a big raise the roof sign on this project! This was the project that took FOREVER because of a few speed bumps: pneumonia, mono, water leak, mold growth, asbestos discovery, and finally being evacuated from our own house. Slowly but surely I was able to transform our bonus room into an amazingly creative art and craft studio for us to enjoy. I gave you the low down on how easy the Flow Wall was to install yesterday. But, I’ve been teasing you and I know you definitely want to see the after pictures.
Before you get the 10 cent tour, let’s take a look back in time at what the room used to look like: Read more
TGIF! Our spring break is officially here. Sadly I’m not going to Cancun to party it up like a bunch of MTV teenagers (As if!). But, I am hanging with two guys! My two little guys that is. I’m looking forward to crafting a little bit with them and maybe catch up on some sewing. My boys both like to sew. They also like to build with hammers. That’s my parenting mission at work. I vow to teach them to do everything that I know how to do no matter which gender that talent is associated with.
But, enough about me, what you are really here to see is the laundry room reveal! Before I give you the whole 5′ x 8′ tour, I want to show you how the Flow Wall cabinets and shelving are installed. Because you aren’t going to believe how easy it was. Before installing the cabinets, I installed the slat wall in no time! Read more
After working on this tutorial for what seems like days, I finally have the Hallway Storage tutorial for you!
Thank you all for being so patient. We’ve had a busy week at the Pretty Handsome Home. Lots of wood rot and drainage problems being addressed, plus an emergency trip to the pediatric dentist. (Warning: Look away if a chipped tooth and bloody lip might make you faint.)
Luckily, all is moving in a positive direction right now (teeth and home repairs).
Materials (to the best of my recollection):
2 – 1 x 10″ x 12′ pine boards (and had Lowe’s cut them in half leaving us with 4 – 1×10″ x 6’s)
3 – 1 x 10″ x 8′ pine boards
1 – 1 x 15″ x 8′ pine board (had Lowe’s rip it to 13″ wide)
1 – 1 x 15″ x 4′ pine board
2 – 4′ x 8′ pre-primed masonite bead board sheets (cut to size by Lowe’s)
1 box of 2″ screws
1 box of finish nails (used 1 1/4″ finish nails in my pneumatic nailer)
6 – 1″ x 2″ x 8′ pine edging strips
1 – 8′ piece of decorative shelf moulding
1 – 8′ piece of trim moulding for the top shelf
Primer
Paint (white for unit, aqua color for behind cube towers)
Caulk
Wood putty
Sandpaper
Triple Coat Hooks (eBay)
Baskets (Home Goods)
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| Checking out with our 3 helpers leading the way. I hope they have their allowance to pay for all this! |
Building the cube towers:
I mentioned that the hall storage cube towers were built using Ana White’s Land of Nod cube tower knockoff plans. Ana’s towers are 17″ wide by 13″ deep and 70″ tall. We shrank Renee’s to 15″ wide and 10″ deep to accommodate her narrow hallway. And we eliminated the top and bottom shelf and legs. So, if you want the tutorial for the towers, head over to Ana’s site.
Here are two pictures of the towers after construction (before priming and painting):
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| We took the towers inside to make sure they would fit. While they were in Rene’s house, I traced the profile of the baseboards onto each tower. You can see how to trace profiles in this older post. Plus, we marked where the towers would fit against the wall (so Renee could see where to paint the wall.) |
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| See, perfectly traced profile! |
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Building the shoe storage bench:
Our space dictated a narrow and shallow bench so as not to impede the traffic flow in Rene’s hallway.
Next I nailed the third board on top of the front side so I had a double thickness of 1″ x 2″ boards.
decorative shelf moulding below them (also cut to 30″ wide).
Finally we cut a board for the bench top: 1″ x 15″ x 30″. And our bench is essentially finished! (We left the top off until after the bench was attached to the cube towers and the wall.)
Installing the towers and bench:
After the towers and the bench were primed and painted with two coats of paint, we transported them back over to Renee’s house.
Renee had pre-painted the wall a pretty turquoise color at the back of the towers.
Now it was time to go stud hunting finding. I rely on two techniques for finding studs (and neither of them requires going to a singles bar!) First, I used my electronic stud finder. It takes some patience, but it gives me a good idea where the studs might be. To use the stud finder, I squeeze the buttons on the side of the gadget. Then s-l-o-w-l-y move the finder left and right over a 1-2 foot wall section. The light comes on when it detects something solid behind the drywall. Then I made a mark in the middle of the “lit” area.
Next I use the knocking technique. It almost helps to close your eyes for this. I will knock along the wall moving left and right. I’m listening for the knock to get higher pitch and sharper where the stud is. I can also feel less give in the drywall and it almost starts to hurt my knuckle because I’m knocking against a hard area where the stud is. You will most likely need a little practice to get a feel for finding the studs while knocking. Anyway, this gives me the idea where the studs are.
I’ve heard of using a third technique. Once you think you have located the stud. You can take a quilting pin and insert in into your drywall. If it goes in about half an inch and stops you have located a stud. If the pin can be inserted all the way to its head, you have hollow wall behind the pin.
Now that we had located the studs in the wall, we checked them by measuring between the studs. They are normally 16″ from stud to stud. And there should be a stud around the door and window frames.
So, the studs have been found and marked. Next we cut four 15″ lengths of the 1″ x 2″ boards and painted them the same color as the turquoise wall. These will be our cleats for attaching our towers to the wall.
Then pre-drilled holes on the cleat where at least one stud is. Lined the cleat up with the top edges of our cube tower. Then drove the screws through the 1″ x 2″ cleat. The second hole was not into a stud. We decided not to use a wall anchor because there was enough strength from the one stud and drywall.
Cutting a Hole for an Outlet:
Here is an easy trick for marking where to cut a hole in your bead board. In our case, we had to cut a hole for an outlet. 1. Take the cover off your outlet. Use bright red or dark lipstick and rub it on your outlet. 2. Set your bead board in place on the wall and press in where the outlet it. When you remove it, you will have the outline of your outlets. 3. Use your outlet cover and line it up with the outlet. 4. Then trace around the cover.
We cut our hole slightly smaller than the outlet cover. After you put the cover back on, wipe off the lipstick.
Then, we installed two more cleats though the bead board and at the same height of the bench. Sliding the bench back against the cleats, I used a few finish nails to nail the back of the bench to the cleats.
Before we put the bench lid on, we installed the second cube tower using two more pre-painted cleats in the same manner as the first tower. Then nailed through the sides of the bench and into the towers on each side.
Finally, we lined up the top of the bench and nailed it down into the wall cleats and into the bench sides and front.
The next step was to nail a 1″ x 10″ x 60″ board to the top of the towers and nailed down into the wall cleats to secure it to the wall. We added some decorative trim to the top board.
We cut a 1″ x 3″ x 30″ strip of wood to mount the coat hooks on. We also cut some more decorative shelf molding and attached it just under the top shelf and above the 1″ x 3″ hook board. Next we eyeballed our hooks and screwed them into the 1″ x 3″ boards.
To finish the built-in unit we caulked all our seams and filled the nail holes with putty. More details on this final step can be viewed in this post. Then covered the dried caulk and putty with paint.
Approximately $300 (including the baskets & hooks) and 3 days of work produced this fabulous organizing built-in hall storage unit! You can see some of the close-up pictures in this previous post.
What do you think? Not too hard to create, was it? A little over a weekend and Renee had a storage system for her entry hallway. I can’t tell you how much our mudroom bench has saved my sanity
I am a lucky gal to have a very wonderful friend in my life.
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 This is my good friend Renee
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A few months ago Renee called me with some super exciting news. She was pregnant with her second child. This was a much anticipated pregnancy and the phrase, “Good things come to those who wait” enters my thoughts when I think about how long she and her husband Toby have wanted this baby.
I wanted to do something very special for my good friend. Especially something to help with those pesky pregnancy nesting tendencies. I knew that she had been struggling with storage solutions for the hallway between her garage and kitchen. This was her catch-all location and it was a narrow 38″ wide hallway I might add.
Plus, there are six doorways coming off this hall. Yup, talk about a challenge! This hall has access to a bathroom, a storage closet, the garage, the bonus room, the back deck and the kitchen.
Smack dab in the center of this hallway was a console unit that she bought in an effort to get some storage and organization. Well, needless-to-say, it wasn’t working for her.
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She bought this console off of Craig’s List to help organize the hallway.
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Renee, really needed a highly functioning location to store anything and everything that didn’t need to come into her home.
Initially I drew up some quick sketches and showed them to her and her hubby. They both liked the idea, so the next step was to take some measurements and tape out our plans.
We taped the outline of two storage towers, a bench with storage underneath, and coat hooks. (Do you like our hanging coats? The vertical strips of tape.)
Plus, we taped the footprint of the unit. It was very important to keep the shelves as shallow as possible, so as not to impede the traffic flow.
Renee was tasked with buying some baskets to use on the storage towers and picking out a paint color for the back of the towers. She knew she wanted bead board behind the coat storage and she wanted black coat hooks. Buying triple hooks allowed her to maximize the amount of coats and bags that could be hung.
Then we got to work. (Yes, I said we! Renee helped with all the steps, because she wanted to learn some new DIY skills. I think she learned a lot on this project!)
We used Ana White’s blog (previously Knockoff Wood) plans for the storage towers, but altered them to fit our size requirements. The tutorial for the rest of the storage unit that we built is here. In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy these after pictures!
First off, you might notice that the before pictures weren’t just cluttered. The lighting in their hallway was pretty dismal. Thanks mostly to a builder grade flush mount light fixture and one CFL bulb. But, we fixed that too.
So, do you recognize that chandelier?! My twitter followers saw the picture here. $10 at the Habitat ReStore! What a steal!
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A pretty place for flowers and pictures on top of the unit.
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Coats and bags have plenty of hanging space.
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The cranberry red baskets allow each family member a place to put their things.
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Plenty of shoe storage for the whole family.
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Here is the tutorial for that cute little blue striped storage box above. Its purpose is to halt all the junk mail. Renee can flip through the mail and put the junk mail in there to be recycled.
It is sitting happily around the corner in her large kitchen. Renee bought some storage bins that we used in the lower half for more storage.
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Now Renee’s daughter has plenty of access to her arts and craft supplies.
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