New Entryway Closet AKA I Have An Awesome Husband!!!

A couple years ago I had been looking on Pinterest and decided to make over our entryway closet. It was a huge change for little money and I love being organized. 

A lot can change in 2 years though and the biggest change has been children grow! Their feet get bigger, their coats get bigger, their backpacks get bigger! By the end of the school year this area was just simply driving me crazy. The kids would try to shove their shoes into the cubbies and they would fall out. Jack would hang up his backpack and then Owen would try to hang his up and it would fall off since the hangers were so close together. 

Most of the time instead of hanging up their coats they would just shove them behind the coat tree in a big huge pile. It was just a mess! As I've told Michael part of my job as a homemaker is to make our house a home and sometimes that involves rearranging things to make our home function better for our family during this season in our lives. Enter Pinterest again and I found this idea. 

I love how french country it looks!! I knew I wanted something similar, but I am not a wiz when it comes to power tools at all. I know my husband and he was not too thrilled with the idea of changing things around anyways so I knew I wasn't going to ask him to do something from scratch. That's when I started scouring OfferUp and Craigslist. I was looking at bookshelves, benches, cabinets and TV entertainment centers. Anything that might possibly work. On the Friday that I got sunburned I had lots of time to look while laying in bed trying not to move and I found this...

It's a TV entertainment center from IKEA. A guy was selling it for $40. I called him up twice to get the measurements, talked it over with Michael and decided we would get it. Michael and my brother picked it up the next day in my brother's truck. As you've probably noticed it was definitely too long for our closet, but that's where a handy husband comes into play! 

The next day Michael started altering the cabinet. He's truly amazing! I think up the ideas and I ask him if he can do it and he does. He loves me...he really loves me! :)

In order to make the cabinet fit I had him cut off the 4 squares on the right side and then attached them to the top of the cabinet to make more storage space. This was prior to him attaching the end piece. 

While Michael working on the cabinet I was cleaning out the closet the best I could. There were a few things I couldn't remove so Michael had to finish that up. 

Here's the cabinet all finished just waiting on the front porch! 

Once Michael got everything taken out of the closet we realized it really needed to be repainted. So Michael did a quick coat and thankfully since it was so stinkin' hot it dried really quickly! 

Time to move the cabinet in! This was when we realized it was actually too big to go into the closet opening. I knew it was bigger than the opening, but I figured we could shove it all the way in on one side and it would fit in and then we could just center it. Yeah no! This was when I just decided to go do other things. Michael wasn't mad, but I was asking him to do something he didn't really want to do in the first place and then this hiccup happened so I just wanted him to be able to figure it out without me standing over him. Of course he figured it out just fine...he had to take the molding off one side of the closet and actually shave the drywall down about a half an inch and then it fit in the closet just fine. I tell you...AMAZING!!!

Here's what the closet looked like at the end of that first day. All the kids shoes were in the laundry basket. I knew I wasn't going to be happy until we finished the project...plus I needed my laundry basket back. So...a couple days later we headed to IKEA for kids eat free day and I bought the 4 baskets I needed. I had been looking on OfferUp and Craigslist for IKEA baskets, but I don't think anyone gets rid of those baskets. They might sell the cabinets, but not the baskets. The next day the kids and I went to Wal-Mart for the last thing...hooks! Later that night Michael was able to hang those and finish the closet. 

All finished! Each child has their own basket for their shoes. Now there is no having to lay the shoes just right so they can fit into a cubbie...just toss them in! Of course they are in the order they were born so Owen is on the far left, then Jack, then Ella and then Zeke. Owen and Zeke's baskets don't actually come all the way out since the opening to the closet isn't big enough. I had to shove the cabinet all the way over one way to get Owen's basket in and then all the way the other way to gets Zeke's basket in and then I had to recenter the cabinet in the closet. I'm nothing if not determined!!! It's actually nice though...they come out enough for them to fish around in the basket for their shoes. 

Now the kids backpacks can hang nice right beside each other because the hooks are farther apart and they won't fall off. Also we are now going to have a one coat rule. They will pick the one coat they want during that season and that will be the one that gets hung up down here. If they want more coats they need to be in their closets and they can switch them out. As for the coat tree...

That is only for adult coats now and it's actually in a better location since it's right by the garage door we can just grab our coats on the way out! Overall I'm so happy with how it turned out. My goal was to finish the closet under $130 and it ended up costing us $117! $40 for the cabinet, $65 for the baskets...hilarious that baskets cost more than a whole cabinet and then $12 for the hooks. I did go on IKEA's website and found out that the TV entertainment would have cost us $149 if we bought it brand new so I got that for a steal!

Before & After!