My wife decided she no longer liked our hallway coat closet and I needed to turn it into a mud room. It was looking pretty ugly, I’ll give her that, but we were storing a lot of stuff in there. I wasn’t ready to give up all that storage space for some shoe cubbies, a bench and a couple hooks. So we scoured Pinterest for days and finally came up with a solution that worked for both of us.
Our closet was quite the eye sore.
After a few trips to the local home improvement store I was ready to start my DIY project. I began by making the bench/cubbies. First, of course, I had to clear out the closet floor.
Then I cut out and put down the base and sides of the bench:
After that I began to cut out and make the center cubbies:
After I cut the boards I used my Kreg Jig to secure them together:
I made sure to screw them together at a right angle.When I was done, I had a piece that looked like this:
I dropped that into my base and sides in the closet and added the top for the bench:
Next I removed the shelf from the closet and built my own:
I needed to add some braces to support my upper cubbie/shelf:
In a effort to give my closet some more depth, I decided to remove the drywall on the back of my closet. I wish I had done this first.
Once it was finally all removed it looked like this:
The reason why I wanted a few more inches of depth is because I still wanted to utilize the area as a small closet. That would mean I need to build doors:
Here were the hinges I went with:
After the door frames were built I added some wainscoting and trim. I also added a little shelf on each side:
I added wainscoting the the sides:
At some point along the way I added trim and caulked any gaps and screw/nail holes:
Then I started painting:
When it was done, I added some hooks, baskets and bins and we were in business!
And my favorite part of the whole thing is the hidden storage we still have:
What a huge difference before and after huh?
Like every DIY project, it took a bit longer than I wanted it to but I’m fairly pleased with the end result. I might consider buying doors if I had to do it again next time. The doors ended up giving me the greatest source of headache.
Way to go, Mike!
Man, that’s one of your most impressive d.i.y projects you’ve done to date. Good stuff buddy. I wish I had your handy man abilities… that is well documented.
Wow! This is awesome! All those math classes really have come in handy 😉
Thanks, yes the math finally paid off! ha
I just tripped across this via twitter. Absolutely awesome project. Well done indeed
Great job!! I’m looking to transform our closet into a mudroom too. I’ve been searching for different ideas and I really love yours. I just have one question, what are you hanging your hidden items on? Did you just put a tension rod up back there?
I hung a wooden closet rod. A tension rod would work just as well.