When we bought our home, one of the things we were most excited about was the storage room. It was lined on either side with shelves and we had never had a room dedicated to storage before. What a great thing to have!
Fast forward to moving day and the issue became very obvious. Though the room had lots of shelves, they were only about 10 inches deep and 12 inches high. This puts a pretty tight limit on the things you can store on the shelves, and everything else ends up stacked on the floor in the middle of the room.
"Stacked" is a bit generous. More like tossed. But with some planning and basic construction know-how, we've turned the above, into this. We're sharing the full tutorial on how we built the shelves on Homes.com today (right here!) but wanted to give some more back story here, too.
So, let's rewind. After emptying the whole room out (oof!) we were left with a blank slate.
We decided to tear out all the shelving on the right side and 1/3 of it on the left so that we could build deep shelves back in.
While everything was torn out, we gave the walls and floor a fresh coat of paint. For the walls, we used Benjamin Moore White Dove and for the floor Benjamin Moore Ice Breakers (the prettiest light greige that really warmed things up). We also installed two of these pretty lights.
Chris wrote up an extensive tutorial on how he built the high capacity shelving for the space for Homes.com right here.
In the end, he made the back deeper, so we could fit our whole Christmas tree back there! And the right side shelves less deep so there is still room to move around in the space. And then stomped all over them to make sure they were strong enough.
Speaking of room, we were astonished how much room we still have in here! How is that possible?! It's amazing where a little purging and organization will get you. There were so many suggestions for organization systems in the comments of this post, but for now, I just grouped holiday bins together and I can see what's in every box--which is already a huge upgrade to what we had!
Now, go check out exactly how we built the shelves right here.
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Wow! It looks like the planning paid off in the end....I truly like the way you remodeled the storage room. Thanks for sharing this post - it makes me think about my garage which needs a lot of work as well.
Hallelujah! Wow that's a transformation! Amazing.
Really disappointed that your main how-to-build article was on homes.com, and not here. Their website never formats it's HTML right, and it's a mess to try and read. It also doesn't display any pictures. I was really looking forward to your how to, as we have a room we wanted to do something similar with.
The formatting is a bit different, but the pictures are showing up for me. So sorry you aren't seeing them! Sometimes trying a different browser can help.
I was wondering the type of paint you used on the floor. I'm considering painting some concrete floors at my house.
We used Sherwin Williams' Porch and Patio paint. Worked great!
We live in a rental that has painted concrete floors. They were painted for the first time before we moved in (the last tenant had carpet), and 2 1/2 years in, it's horrible! We have giant spots peeling up in places! The landlord said they used floor paint, but I'm not sure if the problem was inadequate prep or that the floors just weren't a good fit for paint (some of the exposed parts look really shiny and some look really porous). I know not everyone has a bad experience, so maybe just make sure you have a good backup plan and are willing to redo the floors if it doesn't work out. Ours started peeling about a year in and getting scratched by moving our couch.
After a few years of following and reading your blog I've determined I need a husband that's able to build things. I love this closet. Love, LOVE your color choices.
This was fun to read -- I seriously love ANYTHING you guys make/create/renovate!
I was curious... do you guys have a FAQ page about camera eqpt or how you fund your projects and about how long things take? I'd love to see what camera eqpt you use/recommend!
Our storage area is underneath the steps and it's a mess. Super junky is actually more appropriate. But last night I got rid of everything that wasn't being used. Now, i have to go back and figure out how I want to organize everything and make it functional. Thanks for this post.
Holy moly, this looks great!
Your before picture is classic! I can't wait to see if you're able to squeeze in a workout room into the space too. PS: Congrats on the new baby!
Great job! But, I would definitely add lots of water to your emergency food storage. In disaster/emergency situations, people die of dehydration (or from drinking unsafe water) before they starve, and I think you mentioned that all of your food needs water to be added to it. Rule of thumb is a gallon of water per person per day (plus more to make your emergency food).
Great point! We do have a solution for that as well, it just wasn't the subject of the post. But very important. :)
I was going to ask what was on the shelves on the left, and then after reading the comments I feel like I missed something. Are all those containers for you to survive on if there was an emergency? A gallon of water per person per day... emergency food, people die of hydration before starvation.. is there something happening that I don't know about HA!!
Hahaha. No, no you're ok. It's not a "doomsday prep" kinda thing, at least not for us. We believe in emergency preparedness, but that's not just natural disasters and crumble-of-society kind of things. The more likely scenarios are things like a dip in the market, which causes loss of employment and things like that. In that situation, we have food and things to feed our family. Or we get some pretty nasty storms come through in the winter that make it difficult to get around town for a few days, and we'll make some meals out of our food storage instead of going to the store. We also used our water storage when we had our water main break and we were without our main water line for a little over a week. Just lots of little things that you never anticipate - it's nice to know we're at least a little prepared for them. :)
Looks awesome! Love the paint choices too :) Just started listening to your podcast!
Looks great! Does that back light make it hard to get things down from the top shelf?